Edgar  Allan  Poe 

A  Centenary        ft 


Tribute 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


A 
CENTENARY  TRIBUTE 


BOOK  No. 


Of  this  volume,  six  hundred  copies  were  printed  and  the  type 
was  then  distributed.  The  first  two  hundred  books  were  sub 
scribed  for  as  per  list  below;  and  the  remaining  volumes  were 
assigned  to  Warwick  &  York,  Inc.,  as  distributing  agent  for  the 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  Memorial  Association. 


1  Academy  of  the  Visitation 

2  Matthew  Page  Andrews 

3  J.  H.  Apple 

4  Clark  Arnold 

5  William  S.  Baer 

6  J.  Henry  Baker 

7  Baltimore  American 

8  Francis  M.  Barnes,  Jr. 

9  Miss  Martha  E.  Beach 

10  J.  Carleton  Bell 

11  Mrs.  Geo.  L.  Birkmaier 

12  Charles  J.  Bonaparte 

13  Charles  J.  Bonaparte 

14  Jas.  A.  C.  Bond 


15  B.  H.  Branch 

16  W.T. 


Brantly 

17  James  W.  Bright 

1 8  Ernest  Brown 

19  George  Buchheister 

20  H.  E.Buchholz 

21  Mrs.  Josephine  P.  Carey 

22  Neilson  Poe  Carey 

23  David  H.  Carroll 

24  Bernard  Carter 

25  Charles  Chaille  Long 

26  H.  C.  Chesebrough 

27  S.  C.  Chew 

28  Chicago  Public  Library 

29  Ernest  Judson  Clark 

30  Miss  Virginia  W.  Cloud 

31  Mrs.B.W.Cockran.Jr. 

32  Mrs.  Geo.  F.  Cochran 

33  Wm.  Colton 

34  E.  R.  Conaway 

35  Richard  B.  Cook 

36  Wilbur  F.  Coyle  (Baltimore  City 

Library) 

37  Mrs.  J.  Shiles  Crockett 

38  Walter  I.  Dawkins 

39  Chr.  Deetjen 

40  The  Delphian  Club 

41  Augustus  M.  Denhard 


42  D 

43  E.  J.  Devitt 

44  Daniel  W.  Dwyer 

45  Wilbur  F.  Earp 

46  Eichelberger  Book  Co. 

47  Eichelberger  Book  Co. 

48  Mrs.  L.  Tyson  Elliott 

49  Thos.  Ireland  Elliott 

50  Walter  Ellis 

51  Evening  News 

52  Evening  Sun 

53  Clarence  B.  Farrar 

54  Arthur  E.  Fettis 

55  Miss  Alice  C.  Fletcher 

56  J.Howard  Fox 

57  W.  J.  Gascoyne 

58  B.  L.  Gilder  sleeve 

59  Roger  T.  Gill 

60  A.  A.  Girault 

6 1  Lewis  C.  Goldsborough 

62  Fred  H.  Gottlieb 

63  William  L.  Hall 

64  Mrs.  W.  C.  A.  Hammel 

65  T.  V.  Hammond 

66  Geo.  E.  Hardy 

67  William  F.  C.  Hartje 

68  Miss  Pamela  A.  Hartman 

69  Miss  L.  May  Haughwout 

70  Thomas  G.  Hayes 

71  J.  W.  Hering 

72  G.  Louis  Hester 

73  Henry  G.  Hilken 

74  Chas.  C.  Homer 

75  Jacob  W.  Hook 

76  Frederick  M.  Hopkins 

77  W.  D.  Hough 

78  Oliver  Huckel 

79  Oliver  Huckel 

80  Oliver  Huckel 

81  Oliver  Huckel 


82  J.  T.  Huffmaster 

83  J.D. 


,  Iglehart 


84  W.  M.  Isaac 

85  Michael  Jenkins 

86  Thomas  W.  Jenkins 

87  Johns  Hopkins  University,  Library 

88  Miss  Eleanor  Murdoch  Johnson 

89  Roby.  W.  Johnson 
go  Wm.  Fell  Johnson 
gi  Henry  Keidel 

g2  Mrs.  Frank  Kerr 

93  Keystone  Literary  Society 

g4  Irwin  R.  Kirkwood 

g$  Albert  Kolb 

96  Clarence  Lane 

g7  Mrs.  E.  D.  Latta 

98  Joseph  A.  Lawler 

99  Robert  F.  Leach,  Jr. 
100  Thomas  Learning 
joi  C.  A.  Little 

102  Los  Angeles  Times 

103  Mrs.  Lloyd  Lowndes 

104  Mrs.  Lloyd  Lowndes 

105  C.  A.  Luederitz 

106  Mrs.  Arthur  W.  Machen 

107  Herbert  T.  Magruder 

1 08  Theodore  Marburg 

109  W.  L.  Marbury 
no  Miss  Harriet  Marine 

in  Mrs.  Wrenshall  Markland 

112  J.W.Marshall 

113  W.W.Martin 

114  Maryland  Agricultural  College, 

Library 

115  Maryland  Historical  Society 

116  Mrs.  George  K.  McGaw 

117  R.  B.  McKeage 

118  John  A.  McMahon 

119  Henry  L.  Menckefi 

120  Martin  Meyerdirck 

121  Joshua  W.  Miles 

122  C.  W.  F.  Miller 

123  Mrs  Nowell  E.  Miller 

124  H.  Edward  Mills 

125  Minnesota  Historical  Society, 

Library 

126  Miss  Mary  Norman  Moore 

127  Mrs.  Mary  O.  Mote 

128  E.  D.  Murdaugh 

129  John  G.  Murray 

130  Waldo  Newcomer 

131  New  York  Times 

132  J.  E.  Nunn 

133  Arch  C.  Oder 

134  George  Parson 

135  James  A.  Pearce 

136  Miss  Elizabeth  W.  Pendleton, 

137  Edgar  Allan  Poe 

138  Edgar  Allan  Poe 

139  Mrs.  John  P.  Poe 

140  Mrs.  John  P.  Poe 

141  William  C.  Poe,  Jr. 


142  Arthur  Chilton  Powell 

143  Public  Ledger 

144  Miss  Lizette  W.  Reese 

145  Geo.  A.  Rider 

146  Mrs.  A.  McB.  Rinehart 

147  Miss  Sarah  Elizabeth  Rupp 

148  Mrs.  George  Washington  Sad  tier 

149  John  M.  Savin 

150  Philip  Schaefer 

151  Chas.  R.  Schmidt 

152  Miss  Lillie  Schnauffer 

153  J-  C.  Shaffer 

154  J.  H.  K.  Shannahan,  Jr. 

155  Thomas  Shearer 

156  John  V.  Sheehan  &  Co 

157  C. R.  Shryer 

158  R.  W.  Silvester 

159  J.  M.  Simms 

1 60  Mrs.  Alan  P.  Smith 

161  Elmer  E.  Smith 

162  Thos.  A.  Smith 

163  Thos.  A.  Smith 

164  H.  Albert  Sohl 

165  J.  Frank  Spicer 

1 66  Mrs.  Jordan  Stabler 

167  The  Star 

1 68  Miss  Lena  Stiebler 

169  Mrs.  Thomas  P.  Stran 

170  Mrs.  Thomas  P.  Stran 

171  The  Sun 

172  DeCourcy  W.  Thorn 

173  James  W.  Thomas 

174  Wm.  S.  Thomas 

175  E.  Stanley  Toadvin 

176  A.  R.Todd 

177  William  J.  Todd 

178  Albert  C.  Tolson 

1 79  John  Tomay 

180  G.  E.  Truitt 

181  W.  Burns  Trundle 

182  Mrs.  Lawrence  Turnbull 

183  Mrs  Lawrence  Turnbull 

184  Mrs.  P.  R.  Uhler 

185  The    University    of    Virginia, 

Library 

186  Mrs.  J.  T.  Walsh 

187  Geo.  W.  Watts 

188  F.  M.  Webster 

189  James  R.  Wheeler 

190  Miles  White,  Jr. 

191  E.  Robert  Wise 

192  Allen  S.  Will 

193  Miss  Nellie  C.  Williams 

194  Miss  Nellie  C.  Williams 

195  Miss  Nellie  C.  Williams 

196  Miss  Nellie  C.  Williams 

197  Saml.  M.  Wilson 

198  Jas.  T.  Woodward 

igg  Mrs.  John  C.  Wrenshall 
200  Mrs.  John  C.  Wrenshall. 


OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


COPYRIGHT  1893,  BY  AMELIA  POE 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

A 
CENTENARY  TRIBUTE 


BY 

WILLIAM  P.  TRENT,  LL.D.,  D.C.L. 
OLIVER  HUCKEL,  S.T.D. 
JOHN  PRENTISS  POE,  LL.D. 
LIZETTE  WOODWORTH  REESE 

and 
MRS.  JOHN  C.  WRENSHALL 

EDITED  BY 
Heinrich   Ewald  Buchholz 


Of  TH€ 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


THE  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  MEMORIAL  ASSOCIATION 

BY 

WARWICK  &  YORK,   INC. 

BALTIMORE 

1910 


COPYRIGHT,  1910 

BY 
WARWICK  &  YORK,  INC. 


M/VM) 


CONTENTS 

List  of  Illustrations 9 

The  Edgar  Allan  Poe  Memorial  Association 13 

Westminster  Churchyard.    ByLizette  Woodworth  Reese 15 

The  Centenary  of  Poe.    By  William  Peterfield  Trent 19 

The  Unique  Genius  of  Poe's  Poetry.    By  Oliver  Huckel 45 

The  Personality  of  Poe.    By  John  Prentiss  Poe 55 

The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  from  the  Testimony  of  His  Friends. 

By  Mrs  John  C.  Wrenshall 6g 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe frontispiece 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 10 

Portraitof  Edgar  Allan  Poe 16 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 18 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 24 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 32 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 40 

Portraitof  Edgar  Allan  Poe 48 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 54 

Portrait  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 64 

Portraitof  Edgar  Allan  Poe 68 

Quinn  Bust  of  Poe 72 

Original  Bas-relief  Likeness   for   Memorial    in  Westminster 

Churchyard 80 

Poe  Monument  in  Westminster  Churchyard 88 

Poe  Memorial  at  Fordham 96 

Bas-relief  of  Poe,  Monument  in  Westminster  Churchyard 100 


"If. 


VER! 

Of 


THE  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  MEMO 
RIAL  ASSOCIATION 

The  approach  of  the  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of 
the  birth  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  found  the  people  of  Mary 
land  realizing  that  it  should  witness  their  full  acknowl 
edgment  of  his  genius. 

Among  those  with  whom  sentiment  had  quickened  to 
conviction  were  the  members  of  The  Woman's  Liter 
ary  Club  of  Baltimore,  who  first  discussed  the  subject  in 
March,  1904.  From  the  flint  and  steel  of  their  inter 
changing  thoughts  was  lit  the  flame  of  purpose  on 
April  18,  1907,  when  The  Edgar  Allan  Poe  Memorial 
Association  was  incorporated  by  the  board  of  manage 
ment  of  the  Woman's  Literary  Club  with  the  object 
of  "erecting  in  Baltimore  a  monument  to  the  poet 
worthy  of  his  genius." 

The  Association  was  brought  before  the  public  on 
April  20,  1907,  at  a  meeting  in  the  club's  rooms,  105 
West  Franklin  Street.  Its  invitations  were  responded 
to  by  the  presidents  or  representatives  of  the  women's 
clubs  and  societies  of  city  and  state,  who  accorded 
enthusiastic  concurrence  with  the  movement.  The  press 
was  most  inspiring.  To  the  Sun's  vital  interest  too 
high  value  cannot  be  accredited;  also  to  the  Baltimore 
American  and  other  journals  from  seaboard  to  moun 
tains. 


12  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE 

The  executive  board  immediately  took  up  business 
details,  chairmen  were  appointed  through  Maryland, 
and  correspondence  conducted  toward  forming  branch 
associations  in  other  states.  A  number  of  the  clubs  and 
societies  whose  representatives  had  pledged  their 
support  promptly  redeemed  their  promises.  Over  two 
thousand  circular  letters  were  issued  calling  attention 
to  the  work,  and  emphasizing  the  voluntary  nature  of 
the  contributions. 

The  cause  widely  endorsed,  success  seemed  assured, 
when  conditions  were  reversed  by  the  financial  strin 
gency  of  June,  1907.  Accepting  the  situation,  the  exec 
utive  board  resolved  to  wait  until  returning  prosperity 
justified  resumption  of  active  measures,  though  un 
tiring  workers  continued  to  add  to  the  fund. 

The  celebration  of  the  Centenary  being  contemplated 
alike  by  Johns  Hopkins  University  and  the  Associa 
tion,  cooperation  with  the  use  of  McCoy  Hall  for  the 
exercises  was  invited  by  Dr.  Ira  Remsen  in  a  cordial 
letter  to  the  president  of  the  Association.  This  ap 
propriate  suggestion  accepted,  the  programmes  were 
merged  into  one  of  great  dignity  and  power,  command 
ing  close  attention  from  the  brilliant  assemblage;  the 
evening  of  January  19,  1909,  marking  an  epoch  in 
the  literary  history  of  Baltimore. 

For  the  speakers  gracious  permission  to  here  record 
their  tributes  the  executive  board  extends  warm  and 
appreciative  thanks,  and  also  acknowledge  the  vivid 
interest  lent  this  volume  by  the  accompanying  photo 
graphs. 

With  confidence  in  ultimate  success  justified  by  the 


MEMORIAL   ASSOCIATION  13 

response  of  the  people  of  Baltimore  to  the  Centenary 
meeting,  this  book  is  sent  forth  and  from  every  reader 
of  its  message  is  asked  personal  and  abiding  interest  in 
the  work  and  purpose  of 

THE  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  MEMORIAL 
ASSOCIATION. 

THE  EXECUTIVE  BOARD 

MRS.  JOHN  C.  WRENSHALL 
MRS.  JORDAN  STABLER 
Miss  LYDIA  CRANE 
MRS.  GEORGE  K.  McGAW 
MRS.  PHILIP  R.  UHLER 
MRS.  ALAN  P.  SMITH 
MRS.  WILLIAM  M.  POWELL 
MRS.  SIDNEY  TURNER 
Miss  ANNIE  HOLLINS 

MlSS  LlZETTE  WOODWORTH  REESE 

MRS.  LAURENCE  TURNBULL 
Miss  ELIZABETH  LESTER  MULLIN 
MRS.  FREDERIC  TYSON 
Miss  NELLIE  C.  WILLIAMS 
Miss  VIRGINIA  WOODWARD  CLOUD 


WESTMINSTER  CHURCHYARD 
(Edgar  Allan  Poe) 

LIZETTE     WOODWORTH     REESE 

Stone  calls  to  stone,  and  roof  to  roof; 

Dust  unto  dust; — 
Lo,  in  the  midst,  starry,  aloof — 
Like  white  of  April  blown  by   last  year's  stalks 

Across  the  gust — 
A  Presence  walks. 

It  is  the  Shape  of  Song; 

About  it  throng, 

Great  Others,  and  the  first  is  Tears; 

The  ended  years; 

And  every  old  and  every  lonely  thing; 

Old  thirsts  that  to  old  hungers  cry; 

The  poignancies  of  earth  and  sky; 
The  little  sobbing  of  the  spring. 

He  heeds  them  not; 

They  are  forgot; 

For  him,  behind  this  ancient  wall, 

The  Best  of  all— 

The  short  day  sped; 

A  roof;  a  bed; 

No  years; 

No  tears. 

Not  his  the  strain 
Of  hill  or  lane; 

Of  orchards  with  their  humble  country  musk, 


l6  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

And  bent  old  trees, 

And  companies  of  small  black  bees; 

Of  gardens  at  the  dusk, 
Where  down  the  hush, 
A  thrush 

His  heartbreak  spills; 
Of  daffodils 

By  farmhouse  doors  a  windy  sight, 
A  yellow  gust  driven  down  the  light. 

Nor  his  the  note 

That  trumpeted  of  war, 

Of  ancient  creed; 
Strange,  innocent,  remote 

His  reed 
A  wind  along  the  hollows  of  an  echoing  shore: 

Each  day  was  but  a  pool  within  the  grass, 
A  haunted  space, 

Where  saw  he  as  in  glass, 
But  Wonder,  with  her  dim,  drowned  face. 

For  Wonder  was  his  kin, 
His  very  twin; 
Blood  of  his  blood  indeed, 
And  steadfast  to  his  need; — 

The  ecst  sies  of  cloud  and  sky; 
The  cry  out  in  the  dark; 
The  half  lit  spark 
That  lures  from  earth  to  star; 
The  fleeting  footsteps  far  and  far; 

The  trailing  skirts  so  nigh,  so  nigh, 
These  drew  he  from  their  ghostly  mesh 
And  made  them  flesh; 

We  reach  dull  hands,  for  we  would  know; 
They  fade;  they  go; 
Yea,  he  and  they  together, 
Into  another  weather. 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  17 

A  strange,  autumnal  verse; 

Where  griefs  their  griefs  rehearse; 

A  flaw  of  rain  within  the  air; 

Black  pools;  the  bough  gone  bare; 

And  red  dead  leaves  and  broken  wall; 

The  flare  of  tempest  driven  behind  them  all. 

Yet  ever  is  his  music  such, 

So  rapt  of  touch, 

It  mellows  all  the  ache, 

And  the  heartbreak; 

We  cannot  weep,  but  we  stand  wistful-eyed, 

Like  children  at  the  eventide, 

In  some  fast  darkening  spot, 

Who  hear  their  mother  call,  but  see  her  not. 

Oh,  truest  singer  east  or  west! — 

Not  for  the  poor  handful  of  hire, 
But  for  the  fury  of  the  song, 

The  unescapable  desire, 

He  sang  his  short  life  out,  and  it  was  best; 
His  wage  was  hunger;  it  was  long 
Betwixt  the  days  of  blame  and  jeers, 
And  that  which  set  him  with  his  peers; 

A  fragmentary  song,  yet  dear  to  Art; 
Its  numbers  hold 
Enough  of  music  for  new  world  and  old, 

To  shake  them  to  the  heart. 

And  now,  many  a  summer's  weather, 
Now,  many  a  winter's  storms  together, 

The  wind;  the  shower; 
The  blooms;  the  snows; 

Have  petaled  into  this  brief  hour, 
And  drop  upon  his  dust  a  rose. 

Roof  calls  to  roof  and  stone  to  stone; — 
Like  white  of  April  blown 
The   gust   along — 
The  Shape  of  Song! 


THE  CENTENARY  OF  POE. 

WILLIAM  PETERFIELD  TRENT,  LL.D.,  D.C.L. 

Probably  not  a  few  of  you  traveling  in  Europe  have  kept 
your  eyes  open  for  evidences  of  interest  in  things  Ameri 
can,  and  perhaps  in  American  literature.  If  you  have, 
your  eyes  may  have  lighted,  as  mine  did  not  many  months 
ago,  on  a  copy  of  a  French  translation  of  some  of  Poe's 
tales,  wretchedly  printed,  in  yellow  paper  covers,  adorned 
with  a  repelling  woodcut  of  the  author.  I  saw  my  copy 
in  a  small  bookshop  on  the  Corso  in  Rome,  and  standing 
next  to  it  was  an  equally  unattractive  copy  of  a  French 
translation  of  some  of  Byron's  poems.  The  juxtaposi 
tion  naturally  suggested  a  certain  train  of  reflections. 
Poe  and  Byron,  although  they  number  more  Continental 
readers  than  most  of  the  writers  that  have  used  the  Eng 
lish  tongue,  are  precisely  the  two  writers  of  commanding 
position  against  whom  the  harshest  criticism  has  been 
directed  by  an  influential  portion  of  the  public  of  their 
respective  and  respectable  countries.  That  this  is  true 
of  Byron  will  be  admitted  by  most  persons  acquainted 
with  modern  British  criticism.  If  you  doubt  it,  you  may 
read  the  pages  devoted  to  the  poet  in  Professor  George 
Saintsbury's  volume  on  English  literature  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  pages  which  leave  one  wondering  just  how  eccen 
tric  a  critic  may  be  without  losing  his  reputation.  It 


2O  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

might  be  difficult  to  cull  from  any  American  critic  of  equal 
standing  with  Professor  Saintsbury  utterances  with  regard 
to  Poe  quite  so  extraordinary  as  those  of  the  British  critic 
with  regard  to  Byron;  but  it  is  easy  to  show  that,  like 
Byron,  Poe  has  been  subjected  to  what,  in  view  of  his 
high  position  abroad,  is  an  astonishing  amount  of  harsh 
criticism  from  his  own  countrymen. 

Emerson,  for  example,  is  reported  to  have  called  the 
writer  whom  many  Americans  consider  the  greatest 
author  yet  produced  in  this  country,  "the  jingle  man." 
Poe  did  write  The  Bells,  and  he  managed  to  put  a  great 
deal  of  their  "jingling  and  tinkling"  into  his  poem,  or  his 
metrical  tour  de  force  if  one  prefers  so  to  designate  it — 
but  he  also  wrote  in  his  youth  those  stanzas  beginning 
"Helen,  thy  beauty  is  to  me"  which  are  as  magically 
harmonious,  at  least  in  their  opening,  as  any  lines  I  can 
recall  from  any  other  American  poet.  This  haunting, 
beautiful  poem,  to  the  symmetry  of  which  Lowell  paid 
ungrudging  tribute,  did  not  suffice  to  bear  Poe  aloft  into 
Emerson's  Parnassus  but  the  stanzas  that  compose  it 
have  sung  themselves  a  home  in  thousands  of  hearts. 

Lowell,  who  has  just  been  cited  as  a  witness  for  the 
defense,  must  also  be  called  by  the  prosecution.  In 
famous  lines,  he  brought  Poe  along  with  his  Raven  like 
Barnaby  Rudge, 

Three-fifths  of  him  genius  and  two-fifths  sheer  fudge. 

Perhaps  your  well-to-do  citizen,  after  a  prosperous 
day  and  a  good  dinner,  might  be  inclined,  with  Mr.  Bur- 
chell  of  The  Vicar  of  Wakefte!  to  cry  out  "Fudge, 
fudge"  on  hearing  some  one  repeat  the  stanza: 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  21 

For,  alas!  alas!  with  me 

The  light  of  Life  is  o'er! 

No  more — no  more — no  more! — 
(Such  language  holds  the  solemn  sea 

To  the  sands  upon  the  shore) 
Shall  bloom  the  thunder-blasted  tree, 

Or  the  stricken  eagle  soar. 

But  the  man  with  a  feeling  for  highly  emotional  poetry 
and  an  ear  for  the  rhythms  in  which  such  poetry  should 
be  couched  is  not  likely,  I  think,  to  underrate  these  appeal 
ing  verses. 

Lowell  and  Emerson  represent,  however,  a  former  gen 
eration,  and  so  does  the  notorious  ballot  for  the  ten  best 
or  favorite  American  books  taken  a  good  many  years 
ago  by  the  weekly  journal  The  Critic,  a  ballot  in  which 
Poe  did  not  even  manage  to  come  in  at  the  foot  of  the  poll. 
But  fully  twenty  years  later  I  find  a  modern  American 
critic  writing  about  Poe's  "unlimited  scholarly  ignorance" 
— whatever  that  may  mean — and  it  is  in  this  twentieth 
century  that  I  myself  have  had  to  conduct  a  correspond 
ence  with  the  principal  of  a  school  in  one  of  our  greatest 
States  who  regretted  that  he  could  not  permit  my  History 
of  American  Literature  to  enter  his  school  library  for  the 
reason — not  that  I  had  treated  Poe  too  harshly  or  too 
favorably — but  that  I  had  treated  him  at  all.  School 
children,  according  to  my  correspondent,  ought  not  to 
know  that  such  a  life  was  ever  lived. 

But  this,  you  may  say,  is  too  bizarre  an  experience  to 
be  made  the  basis  of  any  sort  of  argument.  Perhaps  so, 
but  it  is  not  my  sole  experience  of  the  kind.  I  have  also 
had  to  correspond  with  a  teacher  on  the  other  side  of  the 


22  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

Continent — where  to  us  effete  Easterners  there  seems 
to  be  no  dearth  of  the  materials  for  thrilling  adventure — 
on  the  unwholesome  effects  upon  youthful  minds  of  the 
excitement  created  by  the  perusal  of  Poe's  stories.  And — 
that  I  may  balance  a  southern  experience  with  these 
from  the  North  and  West — I  have  had  a  colleague,  a 
Southerner  of  great  culture  and  scholarship,  whose  name 
would  be  familiar  to  many  of  you,  tell  me  that  he  had 
been  obliged  to  decline  an  invitation  to  write  an  essay 
on  Poe  because,  being  a  Southerner,  he  did  not  wish  to 
undertake  the  invidious  task  of  showing  how  badly  the 
author  of  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher  usually  wrote. 
And,  coming  back  to  the  North,  only  the  other  day  a  col 
league  said  to  me,  with  a  slight  note  of  glee  in  his  voice, 
"I've  just  read  Blank's  article  on  Poe  in  manuscript,  it 
will  appear  in  the  —  number  of  -  — .  I  tell  you,  he 
just  rips  Poe  up  the  back. "  I  got  my  colleague  to  admit, 
before  we  parted,  that,  when  writers  of  Poe's  calibre  and 
standing  are  ripped  up  the  back  by  modern  critics,  two 
features  of  the  phenomenon  may  be  predicated  as  fairly 
constant.  One  is  that  the  rip  nearly  always  follows  the 
line  of  a  previous  rip;  the  other  is  that,  as  a  rule,  the  vic 
tim's  admirers  are  unconscious  of  the  fact  that  any  rip 
ping  has  taken  place.  I  submit,  in  the  light  of  my  read 
ing  and  my  personal  experiences  that  we  do  not  need 
ballots  for  The  Critic,  or  the  Hall  of  Fame  to  convince 
us  that,  even  in  this  centennial  year,  Poe's  admirers  in 
America  have  still  something  of  a  task  before  them  if  they 
wish,  as  they  must  wish,  to  make  his  fame  in  his  native 
land  at  all  commensurate  with  his  achievements,  as  these 
are  viewed  by  the  world  at  large. 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  23 

Yes,  there  is  still  much  to  do,  but  has  not  a  great  deal 
been  accomplished?  Not  quite  sixty  years,  that  is  not 
quite  two  generations  have  passed  since  Poe  died  under 
deplorable  circumstances  here  in  this  city  of  Baltimore, 
which,  if  I  may  so  phrase  it,  is  the  center  of  the  mystery 
which  still  surrounds  his  life,  and  which,  in  consequence, 
should  be  the  center  of  future  investigations  of  his  inter 
esting  career.  When  he  died  in  his  forty-first  year 
his  national  reputation  was  not  inconsiderable,  though 
in  many  respects  unfavorable,  and,  in  a  small  way,  the 
foundations  had  been  laid  for  his  international  fame. 
There  were  also  incipient  signs  of  the  formation  of  a  cult. 
Taking  everything  into  consideration — Poe's  antecedents 
and  temperament,  his  financial  status,  the  comparatively 
unpropitious  environment  in  which  he  lived  and  wrote — 
we  may  fairly  hold  that  in  his  short  life  he  accomplished 
as  editor,  critic,  story-teller,  and  poet  a  rather  exceptional 
amount  of  work  which  produced  upon  his  contempo 
raries  much  more  than  an  average  impression.  In  other 
words,  Poe  is  no  exception  to  the  rule  that  the  writers  who 
really  count  began  by  counting  with  their  contemporaries. 
We  may  hold  more  than  this,  however.  Many  a  writer 
has  established  for  himself  by  the  time  of  his  death  a 
greater  fame  than  Poe  had  secured  by  1849,  and  then 
has  slowly  lost  it,  in  whole  or  in  part,  without  having 
experienced  two  great  drawbacks  such  as  speedily  fell 
to  the  lot  of  Poe.  We  must  remember  that  it  was  his 
fate  to  be  read  for  many  years  in  an  unattractive  edition 
prepared  by  a  somewhat  unsympathetic  and  perfunctory 
editor,  whose  name  has  been  anathema  to  the  poet's 
admirers,  but  upon  whom  it  is  no  longer  necessary  or 


24  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

even  just  to  pour  forth  the  vials  of  our  wrath.  It  was 
also  Poe's  fate  to  have  that  period  of  detraction  which 
usually  follows  a  writer's  death  coincide  with  a  period 
of  civil  discord  and  confusion  in  which  literature  was 
bound  to  suffer  and  did  suffer  greatly.  After  the  war 
was  over,  the  work  of  material  and  political  reconstruc 
tion  took  its  natural  precedence.  It  may  therefore  be 
said  without  exaggeration  that  thoroughly  normal  con 
ditions  for  the  spread  of  a  writer's  fame  have  existed  in 
this  country  only  for  a  space  of  about  thirty  years.  Dur 
ing  these  years  our  sense  of  nationality  has  been  im 
mensely  developed,  and  we  have  consequently  taken  a 
greater  interest  and  pride  in  our  literature.  Poe,  with 
other  writers  of  the  past,  has  naturally  profited  from  these 
propitious  conditions,  but  here  again  fate  has  been  some 
what  untoward  to  him.  His  early  biographers  and 
critics  tended  to  become  either  extravagantly  eulogistic 
or  unduly  captious,  and  the  weight  of  authority  lay,  for 
some  years,  with  the  unduly  captious.  For  obvious 
reasons,  American  literature  was  synonymous  to  a  major 
ity  of  readers  with  New  England  literature,  and  it  would 
have  been  little  short  of  a  miracle  if  the  admirers  and 
exponents  of  the  latter  literature  had  greatly  relished 
or  indeed  thoroughly  understood  the  works  of  a  man  who 
had  not  himself  too  well  comprehended  the  merits  of  the 
literature  they  loved  and  represented.  Poe's  fame, 
therefore,  became  too  much  of  a  sectional  or  a  partisanly 
individual  matter  and  too  little  of  a  national  matter,  when 
all  the  while,  thanks  in  part  to  his  lack  of  local,  that  is 
of  untranslatable  flavor,  in  part  to  the  extraordinarily 
sympathetic  comprehension  of  Baudelaire,  in  part  to 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 


f  UNIVERSITY    / 

!\£ 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  25 

literary  conditions  obtaining  in  France,  it  was  becoming 
an  international  matter. 

Shall  we  pause  here  to  indulge  in  words  of  blame  or 
regret?  I  think  not.  Poe's  attitude  toward  New  Eng 
land  and  its  writers  was  almost  predetermined,  and  it 
has  not  seriously  hurt  either.  Their  attitude  toward  him 
has  doubtless  somewhat  retarded  the  spread  of  his  fame 
and  his  influence  in  America;  but  it  has  also  stimulated 
the  zeal  of  his  admirers,  and  it  has  tested  as  with  fire  the 
gold  of  his  genius.  Without  such  testing  would  his 
countrymen  be  celebrating  this  centenary  of  his  birth 
with  so  much  enthusiasm,  with  so  much  really  national 
not  sectional  spontaneity,  with  so  much  confidence  in 
the  permanent  worth  of  the  achievements  of  the  man  they 
commemorate?  When  I  speak  of  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  people  are  celebrating  his  centenary,  I  am  not,  of 
course,  indulging  in  the  delusion  that  this  academic  paper 
I  am  reading  will  pass  with  any  of  you  as  a  Swinburnian 
outburst  of  dithyrambic  eulogy.  All  I  am  trying  to  do  is 
to  emphasize  the  widespread  and  genuine  interest  this 
one  hundredth  anniversary  of  Poe's  birth  has  aroused 
throughout  the  country,  and  to  point  out  the  fact  that,  as 
a  student  of  literary  history,  I  see  in  the  phenomenon  one 
of  the  best  proofs  that  could  be  furnished  of  Poe's  pos 
session  of  a  great  and  unique  genius.  If  that  genius 
were  as  decadent,  as  meretricious,  as  paltry,  as  some  critics 
would  have  us  think  it,  should  we  not  be  obliged  to  consider 
a  larger  number  of  our  fellow-citizens  gulled  or  demented 
than  it  would  be  at  all  comfortable  to  believe?  If  that 
genius  had  not  added  materially  to  the  world's  pleasure 
and  profit,  is  it  likely  that  in  sixty  years,  more  than  half  of 


26  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

which  have  just  been  shown  to  have  been  distinctly  un- 
propitious  to  Poe's  fame  in  America,  his  works  would 
have  been  more  carefully  and  fully  annotated  than  those 
of  any  other  American  writer  ?  There  is  enough  interest 
and  pathos  and  mystery  in  his  biography  to  account  for 
the  study  devoted  to  Poe  the  man;  but  I  doubt  extremely 
whether  the  popular  and  scholarly  editions  of  his  works 
would  have  increased  as  they  have  done  within  our  own 
generation,  to  say  nothing  of  such  evidence  of  his  fame 
as  the  multiplication  of  critical  essays  and  monographs 
and  the  high  prices  paid  for  first  editions  of  his  books, 
if,  despite  his  limitations,  Poe  had  not  been,  besides  a 
waif  of  fortune,  the  most  unalloyed  specimen  of  that  in 
describable  something  called  aesthetic  genius  yet  pro 
duced  in  this  new  world  Yes — a  great  deal  has  been 
accomplished  in  sixty  years.  It  has  been  made  practi 
cally  certain  that  Poe's  fame  is  permanent  and  large 
luminous  as  a  star,  even  if  the  star  still  shines  out  upon  us 
from  behind  light  clouds. 

The  fact  that  Poe,  despite  many  limitations  and  draw 
backs,  among  which  we  must  count  the  comparatively 
brief  span  of  his  creative  activity — he  was  writing  not 
much  more  than  twenty  years — should  have  gained  a 
position  among  American  authors  which  in  the  eyes  of 
most  Europeans  and  of  many  of  his  own  countrymen  is, 
to  say  the  least,  second  to  none,  is  probably  the  most  im 
portant  fact  that  can  be  emphasized  upon  this  centen 
nial  occasion.  It  is  a  cause  for  congratulation  in  more 
senses  than  one.  The  triumph  of  genius  over  untoward 
conditions  always  makes  a  profound  appeal  to  generous 
natures.  Fame  seems  to  do  her  most  salutary  work  when 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  27 

she  dresses  the  balance.  And  when,  dressing  the  balance, 
she  conquers  prejudices,  especially  those  prejudices  that 
divide  classes  and  sections,  she  does  a  profoundly  moral 
work.  Poe  long  since  exchanged  " these  voices"  for 
"peace." 

He  has  outsoared  the  shadow  of  our  night. 

Envy  and  calumny  and  hate  and  pain, 
And  that  unrest  which  men  miscall  delight, 

Can  touch  him  not,  and  torture  not  again. 

What  are  our  praise  or  blame  to  him?  But  what  are 
they  not  to  ourselves?  He  can  dispense  with  editions 
and  monographs,  with  monuments  and  portraits  and  cele 
brations.  We  cannot  dispense  with  them  because  they 
are  needed  for  the  full  expression  of  those  sentiments  of 
sympathy  and  gratitude,  of  generosity  and  justice  without 
which  we  should  be  unworthy  of  our  heritage  of  civiliza 
tion.  Yes — the  fact  that  in  two  generations  we  as  a 
people  have  made  a  not  inconsiderable  progress  toward 
attaining  an  adequately  sympathetic  and  just  apprecia 
tion  of  the  life  and  works  of  the  poet  we  are  honoring  to 
night  is  a  fact  we  can  scarcely  over-emphasize,  a  fact  for 
which  we  can  scarcely  be  too  thankful. 

If,  however,  we  would  be  thoroughly  just,  we  must  take 
some  account  of  what  the  men  and  women  who  do  not 
join  us  in  honoring  Poe  or  are  grudging  in  their  praise 
have  to  say  in  their  own  behalf.  Why  is  it  that  the  author 
of  one  of  the  best  books  we  have  on  our  poet  told  someone 
that  he  had  to  take  a  trip  to  Italy  in  order  to  get  the  taste 
of  Poe  out  of  his  mouth  ?  A  Frenchman  got  satisfaction 
from  praying  to  Poe,  but  although  Poe  is  generally  be- 


28  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

lieved  to  have  been  born  in  Boston  and  although  that  city 
is  the  home  of  almost  every  sect  known  to  man,  I  have 
yet  to  hear  of  the  erection  of  a  Poe  shrine  in  the  place  of 
his  nativity.  What  are  we  to  think  of  this  divergence? 
Shall  we  merely  shrug  our  shoulders  and  ejaculate 
"De  gustibus  non  est  disputandum — There  is  simply 
no  arguing  about  tastes"?  Probably  this  is  the  most 
prudent  method  of  procedure,  but  it  is  much  more  cer 
tain  that  it  is  the  laziest  and  perhaps  the  most  cowardly, 
and  I  somehow  do  not  like  to  take  it. 

Perhaps  in  considering  the  case  against  Poe  it  will  be 
well  to  revert  for  a  moment  to  the  parallel  between  him 
and  Byron  with  which  we  began.  The  standing  of  both 
poets  has  been  considerably  lowered  with  their  respective 
countrymen,  indeed  with  the  entire  Anglo-Saxon  reading 
public,  by  features  of  their  characters  and  careers  which 
have  not  greatly  counted  with  Continental  readers.  We 
may  say,  if  we  choose,  that  many  Englishmen  and  Ameri 
cans  have  judged  Byron  and  Poe  by  Puritanical  standards, 
or  we  may  say  that  a  sound  instinct  of  moral  self-preserva 
tion  has  led  the  British  and  the  American  public  to  with 
hold  its  allegiance,  in  whole  or  in  part,  from  men  and 
writers  whose  examples  and  whose  works  scarcely  seemed 
to  make  for  individual  or  collective  righteousness  and  hap 
piness.  Let  us  comment  on  the  phenomenon  as  we 
please,  but  let  us  not  blink  it.  Byron  and  Poe  have  been 
and  are  constantly  judged  by  moral  standards,  and  they 
have  suffered  in  consequence  both  as  men  and  as  writers. 
But  they  have  been  judged  at  the  same  time  by  literary 
standards,  and  here  the  parallel  seems  to  break  down. 
Criticism  adverse  to  Byron  tends  to  center  in  the  charge 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  2Q 

that  he  had  too  little  art;  criticism  adverse  to  Poe  tends  to 
center  in  the  charge  that  he  had  too  much  art.  The  one 
poet  is  pronounced  to  be  over-copious,  coarse,  and  slip 
shod;  the  other  to  be  costive,  over-refined,  decadent. 
The  question  at  once  arises — are  English  and  American 
readers  sincere  upholders  of  what  we  may  call  a  golden- 
mean  aesthetic  standard,  or  are  they  rather  to  be  classed 
in  the  main  as  partisan  pleaders  bent  upon  making  their 
case  as  strong  as  they  can?  How  is  it  that  so  many 
European  readers  manage  to  accept  both  the  copious, 
inartistic  Byron  and  the  scrupulous,  limited  Poe?  Is  it 
that  they  have  no  standards,  moral  or  aesthetic,  or  that 
they  have  other  standards  than  ours,  or  that  all  these 
questions  I  am  asking  are  beside  the  point  ? 

Perhaps  the  last  question  touches  the  root  of  the  matter. 
Shall  we  not,  all  of  us,  settle  down  as  peaceable  impres 
sionists  liking  what  we  like  and  disliking  what  we  dislike, 
and,  in  the  language  of  the  street,  " letting  it  go  at  that"  ? 
A  comfortable  suggestion  indeed.  Acting  upon  it,  we 
could  all  exclaim  " Glory  to  Poe"  and  go  home.  But 
again  that  suspicion  of  laziness  and  cowardliness  creeps 
over  me.  Can  we  afford  "to  let  it  go  at  that"  ?  I  think 
not. 

Suppose  for  the  moment  we  allow  the  unfriendly  biog 
raphers  of  Poe  to  have  it  all  their  own  way.  Let  us  not 
dispute  a  single  point.  What  have  we  left?  In  my 
judgment,  the  most  interesting,  the  most  pathetic,  and  in 
some  ways  the  most  instructive  of  all  American  biogra 
phies.  What  we  Americans  seem  always  to  demand  of  a 
biography  is  that  it  should  be  exemplary  and  inspiring. 
This  the  biography  of  Poe  certainly  is  not,  except  in  so 


30  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

far  as  there  is  true  inspiration  to  be  gained  from  the  con 
templation  of  a  life  so  steadily  devoted,  amid  drawbacks 
and  vicissitudes,  to  the  unflinching  pursuit  of  clearly 
recognized  artistic  ideals.  But,  granted  that  on  the  side 
of  moral  conduct  Poe's  life  is  sadly  lacking  in  inspiration, 
are  we  such  children  that  we  cannot  face  the  unpleasant, 
the  uncanny  side  of  life?  Can  we  afford  to  confine  our 
sympathies  to  orthodox  and  exemplary  subjects  and 
occasions  ?  Have  we  so  little  motive  power  in  ourselves 
that  we  must  ever  be  seeking  inspiration  from  without — 
especially  inspiration  of  the  smug,  successful,  wTell-to-do 
variety?  Let  us  have  the  exemplary  and  the  inspiring 
by  all  means,  but  let  us  remember  that  man  does  not  live 
by  approbation  and  aspiration  alone.  On  that  sort  of 
emotional  diet  he  might  soon  become  cowardly  and  selfish. 
Man  lives  by  interest  and  curiosity,  or  he  grows  dull  and 
commonplace;  he  lives  by  alert  comprehension,  or  he  soon 
falls  a  victim  to  the  malevolent  forces  of  life;  and,  if  he 
does  not  often,  in  the  words  of  Gray, 

Ope  the  sacred  source  of  sympathetic  tears, 

he  speedily  becomes  an  arid  and  unlovely  creature.  I 
repeat  that  we  all  need  to  be  brought  in  contact  with 
the  interesting,  the  pathetic,  the  warningly  instructive, 
and  that  I  know  of  no  better  way  to  secure  this  desirable 
contact  than  by  studying  with  intelligent  sympathy  the 
life  of  Poe. 

But  is  it  necessary  to  yield  to  the  unfavorable  biogra 
phers  of  Poe  all  the  points  they  make ?  "Of  course  not, " 
replies  the  partisan  biographer,  who  immediately  pro 
ceeds  to  yield  as  little  as  he  can.  This  is  an  entirely 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  31 

human  procedure,  but  it  has  obvious  disadvantages,  and 
perhaps  it  will  be  well  to  try  to  approach  our  problem 
from  another  point  of  view.  How  much  do  we  really 
know  about  Poe's  life  ?  At  first  thought  it  would  appear 
that  we  know  a  good  deal.  We  have  several  elaborate 
biographies,  and  since  the  appearance  of  Professor  Wood- 
berry's  volume  in  1885  it  has  been  possible  to  say  that 
modern  methods  of  thorough  and  comparatively  unpar- 
tisan  investigation  have  been  applied  to  the  study  of  Poe's 
life.  Whatever  Professor  Woodberry's  defects  of  sym 
pathy,  I  do  not  see  how  anyone  can  test  his  book  minutely, 
as  I  have  done,  without  making  the  frank  acknowledg 
ment  that  his  labors  mark  an  important  epoch  in  Poe 
scholarship.1  As  for  the  interest  that  is  taken  in  Poe's 
life,  that  is  really  immense,  and  it  is  increasing,  as  any 
one  who  keeps  a  Poe  scrap-book  will  testify.  No  details 
seem  too  small  to  report,  and,  if  possible,  to  argue  over. 
But,  despite  the  apparent  wealth  of  material,  are  we  in 
a  position  to  say  that  we  know  enough  about  Poe  to  give 
an  entirely  adequate  and  authoritative  account  of  his 
life  ?  I  cannot  answer  this  question  for  others,  but  I  can 
answer  it  for  myself.  About  four  years  ago  I  was  engaged 
in  writing  a  biography  of  Poe  which  I  had  carried  down 
to  the  year  1837.  I  stopped  there,  and  I  have  not  added 
a  line  to  it  since,  because  three  facts  were  borne  in  upon 

1  Since  this  paper  was  written,  Professor  Woodberry  has 
expanded  his  early  work  into  a  portly  biography  of  two 
volumes,  which  will  prove  indispensable  to  students.  It 
throws  some  light  on  the  dark  places  in  Poe's  life  mentioned 
in  the  text,  but  in  the  main  it  does  not  necessitate  any 
serious  modification  of  the  statements  here  made. 


32  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

me.  The  first  was  that  there  were  batches  of  letters  and 
papers  in  existence  which  presumably  threw  important 
light  upon  Poe's  life,  but  which  for  the  time  being  I  was 
not  able  to  examine.  The  second  was  that  I  was  not 
satisfied  that  a  sufficiently  thorough  study  had  been  made 
of  the  newspapers  published  during  certain  years  in  at 
least  six  cities.  The  third  was  that  from  the  spring  of 
1831  to  the  autumn  of  1833  Poe's  life  was  practically  a 
blank,  and  that,  it  was  therefore  impossible  to  say  what 
facts  were  in  lurking  ready  to  affect  my  interpretation  of  the 
whole  course  of  his  after  life.  If  the  Poe  who  won  the 
prize  of  $100  in  October,  1833,  for  his  story  "The  MS. 
Found  in  a  Bottle  "  was  morally  and  socially  the  same  Poe 
who  got  himself  dismissed  from  West  Point  in  March, 
1831 — if  the  obscure  years  marked  only  a  period  of  intel 
lectual  and  artistic  development  such  as  might  have  been 
normally  expected,  and,  if  they  concealed  no  experiences 
essentially  different  from  those  recorded  between  the 
years  1825  to  1831  and  1834  to  1849,  then  it  seemed  pos 
sible  to  construct  a  biography  which  would  at  least  stand 
the  tests  of  the  readers  and  students  who  accepted  my 
points  of  view.  But  suppose  the  Poe  of  1833  was  quite 
a  different  Poe  in  some  respects  from  the  Poe  of  1831; 
then  it  was  entirely  possible  that  a  biography  constructed 
on  the  theory  that  he  was  essentially  the  same  Poe  might 
not  stand  even  subsequent  tests  applied  to  it  by  its  natu 
rally  partial  author.  Although  the  obscure  period  was  a 
short  one,  it  came  at  an  important  point,  and  it  seemed 
better  to  stop  and  begin  investigating.  A  series  of  acci 
dents  carried  me  back  two  centuries  and  over  to  England, 
and  instead  of  investigating  Poe  I  got  entangled  with  an 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  33 

even  more  mysterious  and  remarkable  person  who  lived  at 
Stoke  Newington  a  century  before  Poe  went  to  school 
there — to  wit  Daniel  Defoe,  the  author  of  "Robinson 
Crusoe."  But,  however  little  right  a  deserter  may  have 
to  preach  investigation  to  Poe  students,  that  must  be  the 
burden  of  my  counsel.  We  must  not  suppose  for  one 
instant  that  we  yet  have  sufficient  material  for  passing  a 
definite  and  adequate  judgment  upon  Poe  the  man.  An 
important  batch  of  letters  has  just  seen  the  light.  There 
are,  as  I  happen  to  know,  other  letters  extant  that 
possess  distinct  value,  and  there  is  the  chance  that  facts 
of  more  or  less  importance  may  come  to  light  from 
diaries  and  newspapers. 

Let  me  illustrate  somewhat  concretely  what  I  mean. 
Poe's  life  in  the  city  of  Richmond  falls  into  four  main 
periods — his  early  childhood,  his  schooldays  from  August, 
1820,  to  February,  1826;  his  editorial  connection  with  the 
Southern  Literary  Messenger  from  the  middle  of  1835  to 
the  beginning  of  1837,*  and  his  visit  from  July  to  the  end 
of  September,  1849,  just  before  he  went  to  Baltimore  to 
die.  A  fair  amount  of  light  has  been  thrown  upon  his 
social  status  during  three  of  these  periods,  but  very 
little  is  known  about  it  during  the  months  when  he  was 
editor  of  the  Messenger.  Old  schoolmates  who  were 
living  in  the  city  during  those  months  pass  over  the  period 
in  their  reminiscences  written  in  after  years.  We  may 
accept  his  own  statement  that  his  friends  received  him 
with  open  arms,  or  we  may  believe  that  poverty  and  hard 

1  See  on  this  point  the  letter  from  Poe  to  Mrs.  Sarah  J. 
Hale  communicated  by  Mr.  Killis  Campbell  to  The  Nation, 
July  i,  1909. 


34  EDGAR   ALLAN  POE. 

work  and  the  hostility  of  an  influential  family  and  other 
causes  led  to  a  comparative  social  obscuration.  We  do 
not  know  clearly  how  his  habits  affected  his  relations  with 
his  former  friends  and  his  new  employer,  the  proprietor  of 
the  Messenger;  the  circumstances  of  his  marriage  with 
his  child-cousin  Virginia  are  distinctly  mysterious;  there  is 
a  possibility  that  the  dark  Baltimore  period  may  have 
extended  its  shadow  over  this  Richmond  period.  Even 
with  regard  to  a  matter  which  it  would  seem  should  have 
been  thoroughly  investigated  long  ago,  viz:  his  editorial 
management  of  the  Messenger  as  that  is  revealed  in  the 
pages  of  the  magazine  itself,  it  may  be  fairly  held  that  the 
facts  have  not  yet  been  thoroughly  sifted  and  given  to  the 
world.  I  think  I  do  not  exaggerate  when  I  say  both  that 
there  is  need  of  additional  and  close  study  of  the  material 
we  have  already  amassed,  and  that  there  is  a  chance  that 
some  stray  entry  in  a  diary  or  a  reference  in  a  letter  may 
throw  light  on  this  or  that  dark  period  in  the  narrative 
and  thus  help  us  to  a  clearer  conception  of  Poe's  charac 
ter.  I  know  at  least  that  in  my  own  study  of  that  char 
acter  I  have  been  checking  myself  at  almost  every  step 
with  the  query — Is  there  a  sufficient  basis  for  this  infer 
ence? 

There  is  another  point  about  another  Richmond  period 
that  may  bear  mentioning.  Poe  is  usually  depicted  for 
us  as  a  romantically  melancholy  and  lonely  boy.  We 
are  told  about  his  haunting  the  grave  of  Mrs.  Stanard 
by  night.  We  picture  him  as  a  sensitive  orphan  child, 
proud,  misunderstood,  yearning  for  sympathy.  How 
far  this  exceptional  boyhood  helps  distinguished  psycho 
logical  pathologists  to  give  us  a  scientific  diagnosis  of  the 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  35 

disease  or  diseases  under  which  Poe  labored,  I  am  not 
competent  to  say.  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to  take  up  my 
biography  again  until  I  have  acquired  an  M.D.  degree, 
for  to  judge  from  the  way  some  gentlemen  are  writing 
and  talking,  "great  wits"  are  not  merely  "to  madness  near 
allied,"  but  they  are  diseased  from  head  to  toe  and  from 
the  cradle  to  the  grave.  I  am  not  prepared  to  deny 
that  if  Poe  really  haunted  Mrs.  Stanard's  grave  for  nights, 
he  was  suffering  from  some  sort  of  morbid  affection;  but 
I  am  inclined  to  wonder  whether  a  poetical  story  which 
seems  to  be  supported  only  by  Poe's  own  testimony  given 
about  twenty-five  years  after  the  supposed  event  ought  to 
be  taken  seriously  and  whether  we  have  any  real  warrant 
for  representing  Poe  down  to  the  time  he  entered  the 
University  of  Virginia  as  a  very  abnormal  boy.  It  is  at 
least  curious  that  after  a  pretty  careful  piecing  together 
of  all  the  information  I  was  able  to  gather  with  regard  to 
Poe's  school  days  in  Richmond  I  should  have  been  left 
with  the  impression  that,  if  we  did  not  read  into  the  period 
notions  derived  from  our  study  of  his  antecedents  and  of 
his  life  from  his  seventeenth  year  to  his  death,  we  should 
have  scarcely  a  verifiable  fact  to  cause  us  to  suspect  that 
he  was  not  a  normal  boy.  I  may  even  add  that  the  in 
formation  accessible  with  regard  to  his  sports  and  the 
light  thrown  upon  Richmond  life  by  the  newspapers  of 
the  time  left  me  surprised  at  the  points  of  resemblance 
that  could  be  discovered  between  boy  life  in  Richmond 
in  1824  and  that  of  1874,  which  I  myself  could  well  remem 
ber.  Here  again  I  do  not  wish  to  seem  unduly  insistent 
upon  my  own  points  of  view.  I  merely  wish  once  more 
to  ask  the  question  whether  we  really  know  the  essential 


36  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

facts  of  Poe's  life  and  comprehend  the  evolution  of  his 
character  as  well  as  we  think  we  do,  and  to  urge  upon 
all  in  possession  of  documents  or  family  traditions  likely 
in  any  way  to  aid  us  to  put  their  information  at  the  dis 
posal  of  students.  It  is  not  fair  to  pass  moral  judgments 
upon  the  mature  man  about  whose  frailties  so  much  is 
known,  until  we  are  better  acquainted  with  the  volun 
tary  and  involuntary  elements  that  made  up  the  formative 
period  of  his  life. 

But  I  am  nearing  the  end  of  my  allotted  time  and  all 
I  have  done  is  to  assert  that,  on  the  whole,  we  have  accom 
plished  a  good  deal  for  Poe's  fame  in  the  past  sixty  years 
and  that  there  is  still  much  to  do  before  we  shall  have  the 
right  to  feel  that  we  understand  thoroughly  the  man  and 
his  life.  To  most  people,  however,  it  is  the  man's  works 
that  count,  some  holding  that  they  represent  the  high- 
water-mark  of  American  literary  achievement,  others  main 
taining  that  they  are  possessed  of  but  slight  intellectual 
and  moral  value  and  of  only  a  very  limited  aesthetic  value. 
What  of  these  much  discussed  works  in  prose  and  verse  ? 
Shall  we  ever  reach  anything  approaching  a  consensus 
of  expert  and  popular  opinion  with  regard  to  them? 
Has  the  Poe  critic  as  much  encouragement  to  pursue  his 
studies  as  the  Poe  biographer  has  ? 

All  things  considered,  it  seems  to  me  that  he  has.  Not 
only  have  the  editions,  the  monographs,  the  essays  mul 
tiplied  greatly,  but  what  is  more  important,  Poe  in  the 
last  twenty  years,  through  small  volumes  of  selections 
and  through  various  sorts  of  anthologies,  has  made  his 
way  into  the  schools.  We  poor  teachers  of  English  are 
constantly  belabored  for  the  supposititious  inefficiency  of 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  37 

our  methods  of  instruction;  but  I  am  vastly  mistaken  if , 
thanks  partly  to  us,  there  is  not  a  much  larger  amount 
of  intelligent  reading  done  in  this  country  today  by  a 
proportionately  larger  number  of  people  than  was  the 
case  twenty  years  ago.  Reading  as  one  of  the  means 
to  aristocratic  culture,  has  probably  shown  no  such  ad 
vance;  it  may  even  have  retrograded,  though  I  am  not 
sure  of  that,  except  in  so  far  as  our  attitude  toward  the 
great,  the  indispensable  culture  of  Greece  and  Rome 
leaves  me  dissatisfied;  but  reading  as  a  means  to  demo 
cratic  culture  has  made,  I  believe,  an  advance  truly  extra 
ordinary.  Now  these  two  sorts  of  reading  seem  bound  to 
affect  each  other,  and  they  are  continually  coming  to 
gether  in  our  schools  and  colleges.  Provincial,  sectional, 
crassly  individualistic  estimates  of  authors  and  books  are 
held  with  decreasing  tenacity  in  a  country  of  increasing 
democratic  culture.  Schools,  newspapers,  lectures,  and 
literary  clubs  of  all  sorts  may  seem  to  us,  in  our  pessi 
mistic  moods,  to  be  merely  appliances  for  the  dissemina 
tion  of  bad  taste  and  misinformation,  and  they  do  dis 
seminate  a  depressing  deal  of  both,  but,  at  bottom  and  in 
the  large,  their  influence  is  beneficial  in  creating  and  trans 
mitting  interest  and  in  checking  extravagant  individual 
ism.  These  agencies,  not  only  make  for  an  increased 
reading  and  study  of  Poe  and  other  leading  American 
writers,  but  they  also  tend  to  normalize  opinion  about 
them,  to  render  it  less  and  less  likely  that  bizarre  judg 
ments,  whether  favorable  or  unfavorable,  will  be  passed 
upon  them.  This  formation  of  an  intelligent  public 
opinion  upon  literary  topics  is  necessarily  a  matter  of 
generations,  and,  if  it  ever  tends  to  check  the  legitimate, 


38  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

reasonable  play  of  individual  taste  and  judgment,  it  will 
be  a  bad  thing  for  us  as  a  people.  I  am  optimistic  enough, 
however,  to  believe  that  our  democratic  culture  will 
improve  our  national  taste  and  judgment  and  still  leave 
free  play  for  individual  preferences,  and  I  count  upon 
this  culture  finally  to  give  Poe  a  very  high,  if  not  the  high 
est,  place  among  our  ante-bellum  writers.  I  do  not  think 
that  the  common  sense  which  will  always  characterize 
democratic  culture — it  does  not  hurt  any  kind  of  culture 
by  the  way — will  tolerate  the  notion  some  acute  critics 
have  tried  to  spread  that  Poe's  poems  and  tales  are  not 
real  literature  after  all.  Such  a  notion  means  nothing 
unless  you  can  define  real  literature.  If  someone  were  to 
contend,  for  example,  that  no  real  literature  had  been 
produced  since  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  it  might  be 
possible  to  comprehend  him  and  even  to  sympathize  with 
him.  If  someone  else  were  to  contend  that  any  writing 
or  writings  that  continued  after  the  lapse  of  a  generation 
to  attract  the  attention  of  publishers,  readers,  and  critics 
was  real  literature  because  it  displayed  vitality,  it  might 
be  possible  to  comprehend  and  even  to  sympathize  with 
him.  But  when  gentlemen  calmly  draw  their  own  lines 
between  these  two  extremes  and  say  that  this  or  that  book 
or  writer  is  on  the  no-literature  side  of  their  privately 
drawn  line,  I  am  tempted  to  enquire  with  what  instru 
ments  and  by  whose  authority  they  perform  their  feats 
of  critico-engineering.  While  waiting  for  their  expla 
nations,  I  will  venture  to  draw  my  own  line  and  to  make 
the  not  very  startling  assertion  that  Poe's  work  does  not 
lie  on  the  wrong  side  of  it. 
Does  this  statement  mean  that  at  the  close  of  this  paper 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  39 

I  am  ranging  myself  with  the  partisans  of  Poe?  If  it 
does,  I  am  quite  content  to  take  an  humble  place  in  their 
ranks.  I  doubt,  however,  whether  it  really  is  a  parti 
san  statement.  One  marked  characteristic  of  democratic 
culture  is  its  readiness  to  give  heed  to  what  has  been  done 
and  thought  in  other  countries  and  to  adopt  and  assimil 
ate  whatever  seems  beneficial.  Poe,  on  the  whole,  ap 
pears  to  have  counted  for  the  world  outside  America 
more  than  any  other  American  author.  This  fact  is 
likely  in  time  to  produce  more  and  more  impression  upon 
the  minds  of  Poe's  countrymen.  It  is  furthermore  a 
pretty  plain  lesson  of  literary  history  that  the  writer  who 
makes  the  double  appeal  of  verse  and  prose,  especially 
when  much  of  his  prose  is  imaginative,  has  more  chances 
with  posterity — more  chance  of  being  really  read — than 
writers  who  make  the  single  appeal  of  verse  alone,  or 
prose  alone.  And  besides  the  appeal  made  by  his  verse 
and  his  prose — Poe,  we  must  never  forget,  wrote  the 
Raven,  which  perhaps  disputes  with  Gray's  Elegy  the 
honor  or  as  some  disdainful,  hypercritical  persons  would 
hold,  the  dishonor  of  being  the  most  popular  poem  in  the 
language — besides  this  appeal,  Poe  makes  the  appeal  that 
is  always  made  by  the  mysterious,  ill-starred  genius. 
Now  this  matter  of  the  appeal  or  the  appeals  made  by  a 
writer  is  even  more  important  than  we  are  apt  to  think 
it  at  first  blush.  The  reader  and  the  student  are  already 
bewildered  and  oppressed  by  the  number  of  really  great 
and  good  books  and  writers  that  demand  to  be  read.  As 
the  competition  grows  keener,  the  selective  process  will 
surely  grow  more  drastic,  and  just  as  surely  the  authors 
of  double  and  triple  appeal  are  going  to  have  a  greater 


40  EDGAR   ALLAN  POE. 

and  greater  advantage  over  their  rivals.  The  compara 
tively  small  bulk  of  Poe's  poetry  and  of  his  best  tales  may 
prevent  our  ranking  him  with  certain  writers  of  more 
copious  genius,  but  this  very  costiveness  of  genius  may 
stand  him  in  good  stead  centuries  hence  when  some  of  his 
chief  competitors  are  really  known  only  as  Elizabethan 
poets  like  Daniel  and  Drayton  are  now  known  by  a  selec 
tion  or  two  in  the  anthologies. 

•  No — while  I  have  no  desire  to  pose  as  a  prophet,  I  think 
I  am  neither  rash  nor  partisan  in  pointing  out  the  advan 
tages  with  which  Poe  seems  to  me  to  be  beginning  his 
second  century.  As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  he  claims 
attention  in  four  ways.  First  through  his  interesting, 
pathetic  life.  Secondly  through  his  criticism  and  his 
miscellaneous  prose,  which  is  of  great  importance  in  the 
history  of  the  development  of  our  literature,  is  obviously 
the  product  of  an  exceptionally  clear  and  acute  mind, 
has  been  found  valuable  by  students  of  the  art  of  fiction, 
and  is  based  upon  aesthetic  ideals  and  a  definite  artistic 
theory,  sincere  and  intelligent  though  lacking  in  catholicity 
and  in  a  sound,  historical  sense.  Thirdly,  through  his 
fiction,  which  is  probably  unsurpassed  in  its  peculiar 
kind.  He  is  a  master  of  the  ratiocinative  tale,  including 
the  detective  story,  which  he  may  be  said  to  have  origi 
nated.  In  tales  of  compelling  horror,  of  haunting  mys 
tery,  of  weirdly  ethereal  beauty,  of  tragic  situation,  of 
morbid  analysis  of  conscience,  he  has  had  no  clear  supe 
rior,  and  in  his  attempts  at  the  grotesque  he  has  shown 
power  and  versatility,  though  in  the  opinion  of  some, 
little  true  humor.  It  is  usual  to  say  that  his  stories  are 
remote  from  life;  but  it  is  certainly  true  that  they  deal 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  41 

with  themes  and  situations  which  have  interested  men 
since  the  dawn  of  literature.  It  is  also  said  that  in  his 
stories  Poe  displays  invention  rather  than  imagination, 
but  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  in  literature  as  in  life, 
like  calls  to  like  and  that  it  is  Poe's  imagination  that  holds 
our  imaginations  spellbound.  In  the  construction  of  his 
stories  and  occasionally  in  his  verbal  style  he  yields  to  no 
writer  of  his  class — in  other  words,  he  takes  high  rank  as 
a  conscious  artist.  His  appeal  is  limited  by  the  fact  that 
the  substance  of  his  fiction  lies  apart,  not  precisely  from 
life  but  from  ordinary  human  experience;  but  interest 
in  the  abnormal  is  by  no  means  an  inhuman  or  an  un- 
human  characteristic,  and  the  reception  given  Poe's 
tales  in  France  alone  would  seem,  after  all  allowances 
have  been  made,  to  confute  the  assertion  often  risked  that 
they  are  meretricious  in  conception  and  in  execution.  We 
can  scarcely  be  too  often  reminded  that  Burke's  warning 
against  indicting  whole  peoples  applies  to  literary  matters 
just  as  well  as  it  does  to  political.  A  people  or  a  large 
body  of  persons  may  go  crazy  for  a  short  time,  but  they 
do  not  stay  crazy,  and,  if  a  book  stands  the  test  of  years 
with  any  people,  or  considerable  body  of  readers,  the 
chances  are  that  it  is  full  of  merit.  I  know  of  no  more 
foolish  conduct  a  critic  can  be  guilty  of  than  to  endeavor 
to  demonstrate  that  a  man  who  has  produced  and  con 
tinues  to  produce  fairly  striking  emotional  and  intellec- 
ual  effects  is  little  more  than  a  charlatan.  It  is  at  least 
obvious  that  such  critics  are  not  charlatans,  for  they 
belong  to  the  class  of  dupes — they  are  duped  by  their  own 
overacuteness.  And  let  us  remember  also  that  it  is  un 
safe  to  pay  much  attention  to  analytical  critics  who  would 


42  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

have  us  believe  that  the  effects  produced  by  a  famous 
book  or  writer  can  be  reproduced  if  one  will  only  follow 
a  formula.  Such  critics  generally  fail  to  recognize  that 
they  are  dealing  with  something  truly  alive,  and  that  the 
vital  principle  escapes  their  analysis.  Bland  souls,  they 
present  us  with  a  formula  for  writing  a  Poe  tale  of  mystery 
or  horror,  and  conveniently  forget  to  furnish  us  at  the 
same  time  with  a  tale  written  according  to  their  formula 
which  at  all  equals  one  of  his. 

But,  although  we  need  not  despair  of  Poe's  growing  in 
favor  with  the  American  public,  there  is  abundant  room 
to  despair  of  any  critic's  changing  his  opinions  at  the  point 
of  someone  else's  pen,  and  so  I  hasten  to  my  fourth  and 
last  head. 

Poe  makes  his  fourth  claim  to  our  attention  in  the  slen 
der  volume  of  his  verses.  He  was  primarily  a  poet,  and 
perhaps  it  is  as  a  poet  that  he  is  chiefly  valued  by  Eng 
lishmen  and  Americans.  His  genius — on  the  side  of 
melody  and  color — matured  surprisingly,  not  to  say  regret 
tably,  early,  and  even  when  his  search  for  artistic  perfec 
tion  and  the  embarrassments  of  his  life  are  taken  into  due 
account,  his  comparative  infertility  is  a  matter  for  wonder 
and  disappointment.  But  his  limited  range  accounts 
in  part  for  the  flawlessness  of  his  workmanship  when 
his  art  is  at  its  best  and  for  the  intensity  of  the  impression 
he  produces  upon  appreciative  readers.  It  is  no  small 
achievement  to  have  sung  a  few  imperishable  songs  of 
bereaved  love  and  illusive  beauty.  It  is  no  small  achieve 
ment  to  have  produced  individual  and  unexcelled  strains 
of  harmony  which  have  since  so  rung  in  the  ears  of  brother 
poets  that  echoes  of  them  may  be  detected  even  in  the 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  43 

work  of  such  original  and  accomplished  versemen  as 
Rossetti  and  Swinburne.  It  is  no  small  achievement 
to  have  pursued  one's  ideal  until  one's  dying  day,  con 
scious  the  while  that,  great  as  one's  impediments  have 
been  from  without,  one's  chief  obstacle  has  been  one's 
own  self. 

Yes,  this  man  was  a  poet,  and,  whether  great  or  not, 
a  unique  poet.  We  may  not  go  to  him  for  insight  into 
the  human  heart  such  as  Shakespeare  gives  us;  we  may 
not  go  to  him  for  sublime  inspiration  such  as  Milton  can 
give  us;  we  may  not  go  to  him  for  the  humanity  we  find 
in  Burns,  the  power  we  find  in  Byron,  the  idealism  we  find 
in  Shelley,  or  the  sweet  wholesomeness  we  find  in  Long 
fellow,  but  we  who  care  for  him  do  go  to  him  for  his  own 
note  of  longing  and  despair,  for  his  own  note  of  indescrib 
able  poetic  magic,  which,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  to  be  found 
in  no  other  of  our  poets — the  note  he  strikes,  for  example, 
in  the  stanza: 

And  all  my  days  are  trances, 
And  all  my  nightly  dreams 
Are  where  thy  dark  eye  glances, 
And  where  thy  footstep  gleams, 
In  what  ethereal  dances, 
By  what  eternal  streams. 

The  man  who  wrote  these  lines  is  with  his  own  Israfel. 
He  is  worthy  of 

that  lyre 

By  which  he  sits  and  sings — 
The  trembling,  living  lyre 
Of  those  unusual  strings. 


OP   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

Of 
rOK] 


THE  UNIQUE  GENIUS  OF  POE'S  POETRY 

OLIVER  HUCKEL,   S.T.D. 

It  is  not  my  part  to  tell  the  story  of  Poe's  life  or  to  dis 
cuss  its  problems.  Nor  is  it  my  duty  to  defend  the  fame 
of  Poe.  In  spite  of  all  detractors,  his  fame  is  secure 
among  the  immortals.  But  my  pleasant  task  is  merely 
to  sound  forth  another  note  of  appreciation  among  the 
many  tributes  that  are  being  made  to  his  memory  and 
especially  to  speak  a  few  words  concerning  the  distinctive 
genius  of  his  poetry.  The  exquisite  notes  of  witchery  in 
the  poems  of  Poe,  and  their  pure  song-quality,  lift  him 
to  a  place  in  the  choir  of  the  world's  great  singers, — not 
among  the  stately  epic  poets,  such  as  Homer,  Milton,  or 
Dante;  nor  with  the  masters  of  the  poetic  drama,  such  as 
Sophocles,  Shakespeare  or  Schiller;  but  rather  among 
those  wonderful  skylarks  of  song  who  have  poured  forth 
their  souls  in  rapturous  lyrics,  as  perchance  Sappho  of 
the  immortal  fragments  and  traditions;  as  Herrick,  fresh 
as  the  morning  dew  of  his  seventeenth  century;  as  Shelley, 
an  echo  of  far  ethereal  melodies;  or,  as  Keats,  the  soul  of 
supernal  beauty,  or  Robert  Burns,  voice  of  the  heart  and 
of  all  human  tenderness  and  nobility. 

We  have  had  some  worthy  names  to  conjure  with  in 
our  American  literature, — Emerson,  poet  oracular  and 
prophet  of  another  sphere;  Longfellow,  the  exquisite 


46  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

idealizer  of  common  life;  Bryant,  the  majestic  bard  of 
Nature;  Whittier,  the  plaintive  psalmist  of  the  new  world. 
But  Poe  has  a  rapturous  music  and  a  haunting  mystery — 
a  ghostly  supernatural  enchantment  that  is  unique  among 
them  all.  He  is  the  first  absolute  artist  in  our  literature — 
with  the  rarest  rapture  of  pure  music  and  absolute  de 
votion  to  pure  beauty. 

Poe  belongs  most  naturally  to  that  noble  group  of 
impassioned  Southern  singers — Francis  Scott  Key,  the 
fervid  chanter  of  our  national  anthem;  Father  Ryan,  the 
tender  mystic  of  the  valley  of  silence;  Henry  Timrod, 
high  priest  at  Nature's  altar;  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne,  inter 
preter  of  the  subtle  beauty  of  the  South;  James  R.  Ran 
dall,  the  passionate  singer  of  Maryland,  My  Maryland; 
Sidney  Lanier,  prophet  of  the  holiness  of  beauty,  and  the 
beauty  of  holiness.  Poe  has  distinct  place  among  them 
all.  He  is  the  nightingale  of  our  Southern  poets — sing 
ing  at  night,  singing  on  nocturnal  themes,  but  with  all  the 
passionate  tenderness  and  infinite  pathos  of  his  own 
angel  Israfel  " whose  heart-strings  are  a  lute." 

We  do  not  forget  tonight  the  genius  of  Poe  in  the  inimit 
able  prose-tales.  Such  masterly  productions  as  "The 
Gold  Bug,"  "The  Manuscript  Found  in  a  Bottle,"  and 
the  spiritual  allegory  in  "William  Wilson,"  have  scarcely 
been  excelled  in  literature.  Neither  do  we  forget  the 
genius  of  his  critical  work,  keen  as  a  rapier,  perhaps  a  trifle 
too  severe,  but  marvelously  true  in  the  majority  of  his 
judgments.  But  others  will  speak  of  these  things  in  some 
detail.  In  this  brief  address,  I  would  merely  have  you 
recall  something  of  the  genius  of  his  marvelous  poetry — 
such  a  poem  as  Israfel  just  mentioned  that  came  gushing 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  47 

forth  out  of  his  early  youth,  a  careless  glory  of  beauty  and 
music,  in  those  days  before  he  was  touched  with  infinite 
sorrow  and  inconsolable  memories;  such  as  the  poem  of 
A  nnabel  Lee,  a  miracle  of  melody,  with  a  universal  heart- 
appeal,  pure  music,  magical  in  its  exquisite  sweetness 
and  haunting  refrains;  such  a  poem  as  those  wonderful 
and  startling  verses  called  For  Annie, — "  When  this  fever 
called  living  is  over;"  such  a  poem  as  that  weird  and 
awful  conception  of  The  City  in  the  Sea, — "The  mystical 
kingdom  of  death;"  such  a  poem  as  The  Haunted  Palace, 
terribly  splendid  in  its  portrayal  of  the  ruin  of  the  palace 
of  a  soul;  such  a  poem  as  Ulalume,  that  weird  legend  of 
temptation  by  ignoble  passion,  and  the  power  of  a  holy 
memory  to  save, — "a  dream  of  the  dark  tarn  of  Auber, 
and  the  mystic  mid  woodland  of  Wier," — a  symphony  in 
tone  color, — as  primitive  as  "an  Icelandic  saga  with  the 
surge  of  the  sea  in  it"  or  a  faint  weird  echo  of  "murmuring 
gurgling  waters  in  the  depths  of  a  gloomy  canyon  of  the 
Sierras. "  Or  see  his  genius  in  such  a  poem  as  The  Bells, 
that  rare  piece  of  fantasy,  ringing  alternately  with  light 
and  with  majestic  music, — its  words  and  rhymes,  its  rhythm 
and  cadences,  and  repetends  most  perfectly  fitted  to  its 
themes  upon  which  it  rings  the  wonderful  changes,  like 
one  of  the  majestic  fugues  of  John  Sebastian  Bach.  Or 
see  his  genius  again  in  those  several  poems  of  the  mystic 
idealization  of  great  sorrow  and  bereavement.  The  first 
lines  To  Helen,  one  of  the  most  exquisite  of  his  poems, 
serenely  exultant,  crystalline  perfect,  containing  those 
two  superb  lines, 

The  glory  that  was  Greece 

And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome, — 


48  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

compressing,  as  one  says  into  their  brief  space,  "all  the 
rich  and  high  magnificence  of  dead  centuries."  The 
poem,  The  Sleeper,  a  picture  "drenched  with  the  mystery, 
the  ethereal  beauty  of  a  summer  night; "  the  poem  Lenore, 
of  which  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  once  said: 
"Never  in  American  literature  was  such  a  fountain  of 
melody  flung  into  the  air  as  when  Lenore  first  appeared. " 
You  remember  it, — full  of  feeling,  of  scorn,  of  hot  indig 
nation,  of  exultant  defiance,  of  the  triumph  of  deathless 
love  bursting  forth  "like  martial  trumpets."  And  then, 
his  genius  in  the  poem  of  The  Raven,  mayhap  not  his 
greatest  poem,  but  surely  his  most  famous,  and  certainly 
symbolic  of  his  own  mysterious  life.  A  stroke  of  genius 
created  that  poem.  Its  royal  borrowings  were  minted 
into  new  gold.  It  was  fused  in  the  alembic  of  his  own 
soul.  It  cried  out  from  his  own  heart  and  life.  It  is 
the  fervor  and  passion  of  his  own  weird  and  majestic 
melancholy.  It  is  the  superb  portrayal  of  tragic  mystery, 
of  shadowed  beauty,  of  awful  sorrow.  It  is  a  marvelous 
mingling  of  fire  and  music,  of  passion  and  despair.  It 
is  a  work  of  genius,  absolutely  unforgetable  by  the  world. 
It  stands  secure  in  its  magic  spell  among  the  most  remark 
able  poems  of  the  ages.  It  has  gone  into  many  languages 
and  become  a  part  of  the  priceless  heritage  for  all  time. 
"It  is,"  as  one  says,  "the  final  threnody  in  memory  of  his 
lost  Lenore,  once  the  queenliest  dead,  but  now  elected  to 
live  immortally  young  in  his  somber  palaces  of  song. 
The  Raven  is  a  requiem  of  imperial  affection,  a  poem  that 
takes  rank  with  the  unworded  and  unearthly  harmonies 
of  The  Dead  March  in  Saul. " 
No  one's  life  and  work  were  ever  so  intimately  conjoined 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  49 

as  Poe's.  His  poetry  was  himself — mysterious,  weird, 
melancholy,  passionate.  His  poems  cannot  escape  from 
him  without  his  very  life.  Every  one  of  his  great  poems,— 
and  there  are  only  about  a  dozen  of  these, — were  wrung 
from  the  great  crises  of  his  life,  and  are  full  of  the  same 
spirit- varying  phases  of  "the  great  enigma  of  death  and 
the  majestic  musings  of  an  inconsolable  soul. " 

Poe  was,  as  all  the  South  is,  a  worshipper  of  the  beauti 
ful.  His  supreme  love  for  the  beautiful  was  his  consecrat 
ing  and  his  consuming  passion.  He  loved  it  with  a  mar 
velous  awe  and  a  sublime  devotion;  his  unutterable  con 
ceptions  were  full  of  gloom  and  glory.  His  only  religion 
and  his  only  sacrifice  on  earth  were  his  unceasing  fidel 
ity  to  love  and  beauty,  and  his  unconquerable  longings  for 
the  unattainable.  His  mystical  cadences  seem  to  bring 
us  into  the  very  shadow  of  the  supernatural.  They  are 
an  enchanted  treasure,  more  precious  than  silver  or  gold. 

The  French  poet  and  critic,  Baudelaire,  who  translated 
him  marvelously  well  into  the  French  speech,  saw  Poe 
as  "a  new- world  minstrel  strayed  from  some  proper  hab 
itat  to  this  rude  and  dissonant  America,  which  was  for 
Poe  only  a  vast  prison  through  which  he  ran  hither  and 
thither,  with  the  feverish  agitation  of  a  being  created  to 
breathe  in  another  world  and  where  his  interior  life, 
spiritual  as  a  poet,  was  but  one  perpetual  effort  to  escape  the 
influence  of  this  mundane  atmosphere.  Clasp  the  sensi 
tive  hand  of  this  troubled  singer  dreeing  thus  his  weird, 
and  enter  into  the  night  with  him  and  share  his  dreams, 
and  lament  with  him  the  charm  of  evanescence,  and  the 
supreme  beauty  and  the  unattainable."  So  Poe  lures 
us  into  his  unforgetable  "night  of  memories  and  sighs." 


50  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

jr  But  could  we  have  had  the  poems  of  Poe  without  the 
tragic  life  of  Poe, — without  the  suffering,  poverty,  pas 
sionate  love,  awful  losses,  infinite  tragedy  and  sorrow? 
They  are  the  tear  drops  of  his  life,  yea,  the  blood  drops. 
They  are  the  distillation  of  his  awful  agonies.  He  paid 
a  great  price  for  his  poems, — precious  may  the  world  esteem 
them.  And  yet,  if  as  he  believed  and  so  often  contended, 
sorrow  and  beauty  were  the  poet's  truest  themes,  and  love 
and  death  the  great  sanctifiers  and  transfigurers,  and 
if,  as  he  so  often  said,  the  poetic  feeling  was  the  greatest 
of  earthly  pleasures, — then  even  in  his  awful  pain  and 
agony,  in  his  tragedies  and  sorrows,  was  not  the  great  artist 
made,  the  great  poet  born, — were  there  not  constant  com 
pensations  and  was  not  his  heritage  of  woe,  after  all,  his 
most  precious  possession? 

But  friends,  was  there  not  another  side?  Many  of 
us  of  this  generation  love  Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  There 
are  many  points  of  "kinship  between  Poe  and  Stevenson. 
Both  loved  the  sea  and  its  adventures,  and  things  romantic 
and  occult.  "The  Manuscript  in  a  Bottle  "  perchance 
suggested  The  Bottle  Imp  of  Stevenson.  Certainly  "Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde"  is  exactly  in  the  vein  of  Poe. 
Both  writers  were  victims  of  untimely  disease.  Poe  we 
call  the  greater  genius;  Stevenson  the  greater  heart.  We 
love  Stevenson  for  his  intense  humanness  and  his  heroic 
spirit.  Have  we  been  blind  to  these  things  in  Poe? 

His  poems  and  other  writings  only  represent  a  part  of 
the  man.  Even  as  we  read  his  poems,  I  feel  that  we  ought 
to  revise  our  traditional  and  prejudiced  view  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe.  We  cannot  forget  his  faults  and  failings, — 
for  the  world  has  dwelt  long  and  too  insistently  upon 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  51 

them, — but  on  this  occasion  we  may  well  remember  sym 
pathetically  some  of  the  finer  traits  of  his  life — which 
were  as  truly  part  of  him — more  truly,  I  think,  than  the 
darker  side.  There  were  many  kindly  and  lovable  fea 
tures  of  his  life  which  glint  forth  at  times  in  his  poems,  as 
well  as  in  the  reminiscences  of  some  of  his  best  friends. 

Remember  that,  besides  his  sad  and  weird  side,  he  had 
a  side  which  was  bright  and  cheerful.  Some  of  his  friends 
who  knew  him  well  bear  testimony  to  the  fact  that  often 
he  was  most  cheerful  and  even  playful  in  mood  and  bril 
liant  in  light-hearted  repartee.  Remember  the  humor 
that  comes  out  at  times  in  some  of  his  brilliant  stories, 
like  that  rollicking  farce,  "  The  Spectacles,"  which  tells  the 
story  of  the  near-sighted  young  man  who  married  his 
great-grandmother.  And  there  are  here  and  there  light, 
brilliant,  playful  touches  in  some  of  his  poems.  Remem 
ber  the  purity,  the  clean-mindedness  of  his  work.  Not  a 
single  line  in  all  his  poetry  or  his  prose  that  is  unworthy 
to  be  read  by  the  purest-hearted.  It  is  a  wonderful  record 
for  one  who  loved  the  occult,  the  gruesome,  the  abnormal. 
It  shows  character  and  ideals. 

Remember  the  exquisite  faithfulness,  sweetness  and 
devotion  of  his  home-life,  in  both  his  poetry  and  in  the 
reality  of  his  life.  His  child-wife,  Virginia,  as  one  says, 
was  "a  dark-eyed,  dark-haired  daughter  of  the  South; 
her  face  exquisitely  lovely — the  most  delicate  realization 
of  the  poet's  ideal."  And  his  love  for  his  wife  was  "a 
sort  of  rapturous  worship. " 

Remember  also  that  his  poems,  in  delicacy  and  nobility 
of  phrasing  and  feeling,  as  well  as  the  letters  of  his  friends, 
bear  testimony  to  the  fact  that  throughout  his  life  and 


52  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

even  in  the  midst  of  his  sorrows,  he  had  the  instincts  and 
the  constant  manners  of  a  gentleman.  He  was  proud  but 
genial,  handsome  but  grave,  courtly  and  courteous,  elo 
quent  and  kindly. 

In  a  word,  there  is  a  most  beautiful  and  attractive  side 
to  Poe's  life.  I  love  to  think  that  on  his  finer  side,  he 
was  an  embodiment  of  much  of  the  genius  of  the  South. 
He  had  the  steadfast  Southern  devotion  to  ideals.  He  had 
no  sordid  love  of  money.  He  was  never  unfaithful  to 
honor.  He  was  always  in  pursuit  of  some  noble  quest. 
His  whole  ambition  was  literary  achievement,  and  he 
never  wavered,  in  spite  of  suffering,  loss  and  defeat. 

His  poems  show  that  he  had  the  instinctive  Southern 
chivalry  for  women.  They  are  full  of  the  mystery  of 
beauty,  of  the  idealization  of  women — of  the  eternal  wor 
ship  and  longings  of  love.  His  poems  show  the  stately 
and  majestic  sadness  which,  after  all,  is  something  of  the 
background  of  our  Southern  life  and  nature — the  feeling 
of  an  exquisite  beauty  too  delicate  for  earth,  the  sense  of 
present  happiness  that  must  presently  end,  an  outward 
gayety  that  hides  a  secret  sorrow — the  persistent  intima 
tion  of  mystery,  the  sense  of  evanescence,  the  tender  love 
for  the  past  and  of  the  glory  that  has  vanished. 

It  is  true  there  is  no  definite  geography,  only  vague  and 
mystical  locations,  in  Poe's  poems,  yet  there  is  certainly 
enough  of  local  color  and  of  pervasive  atmosphere  to 
identify  his  poems  absolutely  with  the  South.  And  I 
am  quite  sure  that  his  music  in  verse,  his  pathetic  sweet 
ness  of  speech,  his  love  of  soft  refrains  were  largely  in 
spired  by  the  soft  croonings  of  some  African  mammy  in 
childhood's  days,  by  the  gracious  caressing  voices  of 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  53 

Southern  women,  by  the  whole  dreamy  delicious  mystic 
atmosphere  of  the  Southland. 

Only  three  themes  did  Poe  touch  in  his  poetry, — Love, 
Beauty,  Death.  He  felt  that  this  was  all  that  poetry 
could  do.  We  are  glad  that  other  poets  have  struck  other 
notes.  We  are  glad  for  a  greater  diapason,  for  the  strong 
notes  of  Life,  and  Faith  and  Work.  We  are  glad  for 
Chivalry  and  Heroism  and  Achievement  that  stir  the 
poetry  in  some  mighty  souls.  We  rejoice  that  other 
equally  true  poets,  like  Tennyson  and  Browning  in  Eng 
land,  and  Emerson  and  Lowell  and  Lanier  in  America, 
while  loving  beauty  with  their  whole  soul,  love  it,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  with  a  sturdier  faith  and  a  more  whole 
some  cheeriness. 

Yet  it  would  be  ungracious  to  find  fault  with  what  Poe 
was  not.  We  can  only  be  grateful  for  the  golden  treas 
uries  which  he  has  given  us  as  his  heritage  to  us  and  to 
the  world.  Literature  would  be  forever  the  poorer  to 
deprive  it  of  these  exquisite  pearls  of  the  passion  of  genius. 
His  sad  life  we  may  remember  in  pity;  much  of  his  work 
may  be  forgotten;  but  the  few  perfect  poems  that  his 
spirit  wrought  out  are  among  the  imperishable  treasures 
of  mankind. 

Friends,  the  Southern  people  and  especially  we  of 
Baltimore  must  erect  to  the  honor  of  the  genius  of  Poe 
a  noble  and  worthy  monument  in  this  city — a  monument, 
perchance  not  so  large,  but  as  exquisite  in  its  way  as  the 
Scott  monument  in  Edinburgh.  The  Southern  people 
must  build  it.  For  Poe's  genius  is  the  exquisite  flower 
of  the  South,  as  well  as  a  marvelous  creation  of  our  whole 
wonderful  American  life.  The  Southern  people  must 


54  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

build  this  monument.  If  we  show  that  we  are  in  earnest 
in  our  appreciation  of  Poe  and  in  our  endeavor  in  this 
movement,  we  shall  not  lack  cooperation  from  our  whole 
people  of  America  and  from  all  the  world.  But  the  bur 
den  and  the  glory  of  this  work  belongs  to  the  South. 
It  must  be  their  splendid  achievement.  I  know  that  we 
shall  yet  see  it, — a  superb  work  of  art  in  a  commanding 
centre  of  this  goodly  city  of  Baltimore,  that  is  so  insep 
arably  linked  with  the  name  and  fame  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe. 

When  Lafayette  made  his  visit  to  this  country  in  1824, 
and  came  to  Baltimore,  he  went  with  his  staff  to  the  West 
minster  Churchyard  to  the  grave  of  his  old  Revolutionary 
friend,  General  David  Poe,  and  kneeling  on  the  ground, 
he  kissed  the  sod,  and  exclaimed,  "Here  lies  a  noble 
heart!" 

There  will  come  a  day,  I  believe,  when  a  new  and  beau 
tiful  charity,  in  form  like  an  angel,  shall  yet  come  to  an 
other  grave  that  lies  alongside  of  the  old  General's  in  that 
same  cemetery,  and  kneeling  down  in  immemorial  atone 
ment  for  the  harshness  of  past  judgments,  shall  print  a 
kiss  of  loving  pity  on  the  sod  above  the  grave  of  genius, 
and  shall  say,  "God  bless  him,  and  forgive  him.  Here 
lies  a  noble  heart!" 


THE  PERSONALITY  OF  POE 

JOHN  PRENTISS   POE,   LL.D. 

When  I  was  invited  to  take  part  in  this  most  interesting 
celebration  in  honor  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  my  father's 
cousin  and  the  husband  of  my  mother's  sister,  the  thought 
instantly  occurred  to  me  that  it  might  be  more  becoming 
in  me  to  be  a  silent  spectator  than  an  active  participant 
and  I  hesitated  for  a  space  to  accept  the  gracious  invita 
tion. 

A  little  reflection,  however,  made  it  clear  that  the  sever 
est  good  taste  would  not  only  not  be  offended  by  my 
joining  publicly  in  these  memorial  exercises,  but,  that,  on 
the  contrary,  all  who  like  me  bear  his  name  and  share  his 
blood  should  most  willingly  do  all  in  our  power  to  show 
our  grateful  appreciation  of  this  distinguished  tribute  to 
our  kinsman. 

It  is  quite  impossible  for  the  members  of  his  family  to 
observe  without  the  deepest  sensibility  his  steadily  in 
creasing  fame  and  the  generous  recognition  the  world  over 
of  his  marvelous  genius. 

Especially  are  we  gratified  that  here  in  Baltimore  this 
movement  in  commemoration  of  his  illustrious  place  as  a 
star  of  the  first  magnitude  in  the  firmament  of  letters  was 
begun. 

He  did  not  happen  to  be  born  in  Baltimore. 


56  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

His  eyes  first  saw  the  light  in  Boston  and  his  gifted 
mother,  for  whom  he  never  failed  to  cherish  the  deepest 
filial  admiration  and  devotion,  impressed  upon  him  the 
duty  of  remembering  that  there  she  had  found  her  best 
and  most  sympathetic  friends. 

But  he  is  identified  with  Baltimore  in  his  lineage. 

Part  of  his  early  life  was  passed  here.  His  remains 
lie  in  the  venerable  graveyard  where  the  bones  of  several 
generations  of  his  kindred  repose,  and  here,  more  than 
thirty  years  ago,  before  impartial  history  had  fully  rescued 
his  reputation  as  a  man  from  the  venomous  calumnies 
which  for  years  it  had  so  unjustly  suffered,  the  first 
Memorial  ever  erected  in  America  to  a  poet  was  reared  in 
his  honor. 

Here,  therefore,  it  is  peculiarly  fitting  that  the  Cen 
tennial  of  his  birth  should  be  celebrated  with  all  the  em 
phasis  that  just  appreciation  of  his  extraordinary  genius 
and  literary  achievements,  and  sympathy  for  his  sorrows 
can  inspire. 

During  the  long  interval  since  on  the  anniversary  of 

The  lonesome  October  of  his  most  immemorial  year, 

his  earthly  remains  were  laid  to  rest  by  the  side  of  his 
ancestors  in  Westminster  churchyard,  every  material 
incident  of  his  life  has  been  brought  to  light,  either  by 
the  hand  of  sympathetic  admiration,  or  of  malevolent 
criticism. 

The  world  has  been  truly  told  of  all  his  movements 
from  his  earliest  boyhood  down  to  the  melancholy  hour 
when  the  pleasing  prospect  of  extrication  and  release 
at  last  from  the  corroding  trials  and  troubles  of  his  stren- 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  57 

uous  struggle  for  bread  and  fame  was  suddenly  extin 
guished  under  circumstances  of  the  deepest  pathos. 

One  by  one  the  malignant  slanders  which  pursued  him 
into  the  silence  of  his  premature  and,  for  a  time,  neglected 
grave,  and  blackened  his  memory  for  years  have  been  met 
and  refuted  by  indisputable  proof  laboriously  collected 
and  the  world  has  at  last  been  brought  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  gracious  courtesy  and  the  real  excellence  and  dignity 
which  almost  invariably  marked  his  demeanor. 

The  one  infirmity  to  which  all  his  errors  were  due  has 
never  been  denied.  Side  by  side  with  Burns  and  Byron 
he  stands  in  the  pitiful  sorrow  and  shame  of  this  terrible 
misfortune. 

But,  except  when  his  peculiarly  sensitive  organization 
yielded  to  the  destructive  influence  which  robbed  him 
for  a  time  of  his  intellect  and  self-control,  all  trustworthy 
accounts  represent  him  as  a  man  of  exquisite  refinement 
and  grace,  no  less  conspicuous  for  the  elegance  of  his 
manners  than  for  his  almost  supramortal  eloquence  and 
marvelous  intellectual  endowments. 

The  testimony  of  those  who  worked  with  him,  who  day 
by  day  witnessed  the  constant  manifestations  of  his  sweet 
and  uncomplaining  patience,  his  gentle  yet  proud  resig 
nation  to  the  overwhelming  disappointments  which  seemed 
to  crowd  around  his  path  and  at  times  well  nigh  drove 
him  to  despair  tells  the  story  of  the  development  in  him 
of  the  edifying  virtues  which  not  infrequently  find  their 
richest  bloom  amidst  the  bitterness  of  the  hope  deferred 
that  maketh  the  heart  sick. 

Mrs.  Osgood  who  certainly  had  the  amplest  opportunity 
during  the  most  eventful  and  trying  years  of  his  life  of 


58  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

observing  his  conduct  and  behavior  declares,  that  "though 
she  had  heard  of  aberrations  on  his  part  from  the  straight 
and  narrow  path  she  had  never  seen  him  otherwise  than 
gentle,  generous,  well-bred  and  fastidiously  refined." 

And  to  this  she  adds,  that  "to  a  sensitive  and  delicately- 
nurtured  woman  there  was  a  peculiar  and  irresistible 
charm  with  which  he  invariably  approached  all  women 
who  won  his  respect. " 

Indeed  the  proof  of  his  habitual  reverence  for  woman 
than  which  no  more  conclusive  evidence  of  the  nobility 
of  manhood  can  be  found,  comes  as  the  fitting  climax  of 
his  lofty  conception  of  the  true  poetic  principle,  which 
he  delineates  with  such  amazing  beauty  and  power  and 
whose  mastery  over  him  he  so  proudly  avows. 

He  owns  it  in  all  noble  thoughts;  in  all  unworldly  motives; 
in  all  holy  impulses;  in  all  chivalrous,  generous  and  self- 
sacrificing  deeds. 

He  feels  it  in  the  beauty  of  woman;  in  the  grace  of  her 
step;  in  the  luster  of  her  eye;  in  the  melody  of  her  voice; 
in  her  soft  laughter;  in  her  sigh;  in  the  harmony  of  the 
rustling  of  her  robes. 

He  deeply  feels  it  in  her  winning  endearments;  in  her 
burning  enthusiasms;  in  her  gracious  charities;  in  her 
meek  and  devotional  endurances;  but  above  all,  ah!  far 
above  all,  he  kneels  to  it;  he  worships  it;  in  the  faith;  in 
the  purity;  in  the  strength;  in  the  altogether  divine 
majesty  of  her  love. 

Listening  to  these  glowing  words,  who  shall  couple 
his  name  with  depravity  or  dishonor? 

The  weakness,  which  undoubtedly  did  imperil  his  life, 
diminish  to  the  world's  great  and  irreparable  loss  the 
products  of  his  genius  and  furnish  to  his  enemies  some 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  59 

color  for  their  calumnies,  he  deeply  deplored  and  stren 
uously  struggled  to  overcome. 

"I  have  absolutely  no  pleasure,"  he  writes,  one  year 
before  his  death,  "in  the  stimulants  in  which  I  sometimes 
so  madly  indulge. 

"It  has  not  been  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  that  I  have 
periled  life  and  reputation  and  reason.  It  has  been  in 
the  desperate  attempt  to  escape  from  torturing  mem 
ories." 

"No  one,"  says  Ingram,  in  his  candid  and  discriminat 
ing  analysis  of  Poe's  character  and  career,  "who  really 
knew  the  man,  either  personally  or  through  his  works,  but 
will  believe  this  disclosure,  revealed  in  one  of  his  intensely 
glowing  letters  to  Mrs.  Whitman. " 

The  sad  confession  is  now  quite  universally  accepted  as 
the  truth,  and  the  harsh  and  pitiless  condemnation  of  his 
occasional  excesses,  distorted  and  exaggerated  as  these 
were  by  malice  and  envy  immediately  after  his  death, 
has  been  softened  and  subdued  by  a  more  just  and  charit 
able  judgment. 

This  is  the  final  judgment  and  it  will  stand  without 
danger  of  reversal. 

It  recognizes  the  supremacy  of  his  surpassing  genius, 
but  disdains  to  disparage  or  tarnish  it  by  gloating  over 
the  frailties  of  temperament,  steadily  fought  against, 
seldom  victorious,  conquering  only  in  hours  of  extreme 
anguish  and  sorrow  and  always  lamented  with  an  inten 
sity  of  grief  known  only  to  the  exquisitely  sensitive  souls 
of  those  who,  like  him,  feel  the  stain  of  such  weakness 
more  keenly  than  a  wound. 

I  speak  of  this  distressing  fact  because  reference  to  it 


60  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

could  only  be  avoided  by  confining  myself  strictly  to  a 
consideration  of  his  commanding  position  in  the  literary 
world. 

Sincerely  believing  as  I  do  his  own  solemn  asservation 
that  his  "soul  was  incapable  of  dishonor  and  that,  with 
the  exception  of  occasional  follies  and  excesses,  to  which 
he  was  driven  by  intolerable  sorrow,  he  could  call  to  mind 
no  act  of  his  life  done  in  his  conscious  moments  which 
could  justly  bring  to  his  cheek  the  blush  of  shame,"  I 
am  not  willing  to  ignore  or  belittle  this  sad  side  of  his 
career,  and  upon  this  memorable  occasion  content  myself 
with  allusions  exclusively  to  the  mighty  achievements  of 
his  superbly  gifted  intellect. 

While  there  may  be  room  for  controversy  as  to  the  fre 
quency  and  extent  of  the  dominion  which  stimulants 
had  acquired  over  him,  and  as  to  the  errors  which  he  com 
mitted  whilst  under  their  maddening  influence,  assuredly 
he  was  wholly  free  from  the  vices  which  stain  the  soul. 

There  was  in  him  no  dissimulation  nor  deceit,  nor  con 
cealment  of  his  frailties. 

Conscious  of  his  own  splendid  powers,  no  ignoble  envy 
of  the  success  of  others  degraded  his  haughty  spirit. 

On  desperate  seas  long  wont  to  roam, 

he  endured  with  proud  reticence  the  extreme  pangs  of 
poverty  and  destitution. 

He  saw  his  idolized  wife  wasted  by  illness  and  disease 
passing  through  the  dark  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death, 
suffering  from  the  want  of  comforts  which  he  was  powerless 
to  supply,  and 

When  her  high-born  kinsmen  came 
And  bore  her  away  from  him, 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  6l 

his  reason  for  a  time  tottered  and  fell,  but  no  pressure  of 
grief,  or  sorrow  or  privation  ever  betrayed  or  drove  him 
into  the  crooked  paths  of  dishonesty  or  fraud. 

There  may  be  some  who  think  that  after  all  the  facts 
of  his  private  life  are  of  no  consequence  and  that  in  the 
enjoyment  of  the  rich  fruits  of  his  great  genius,  it  matters 
little  what  kind  of  man  he  was,  whether  good  or  bad, 
honorable  or  depraved  in  the  ordinary  relationships  of 
life  and  society. 

I  do  not  agree  with  this  view. 

Deep  and  ardent  as  may  be  our  love  of  the  beautiful; 
keen  as  may  be  our  enjoyment  of  the  consummate  work 
of  those  who  portray  or  depict  it  in  its  highest  develop 
ments,  whether  with  pen  or  brush  or  chisel,  our  pleasure 
in  the  contemplation  and  study  of  its  most  artistic  mani 
festations  cannot  fail  to  be  intensified  and  exalted  by  the 
consoling  knowledge  that  the  towering  genius  whose 
soul  speaks  to  us  from  the  past  in  the  entrancing  melody 
and  commanding  power  of  glowing  words,  or  in  the  sub 
duing  fascination  of  breathing  canvas,  or  in  the  potent 
spell  of  majestic  marble,  was  animated  not  alone  by  a 
dominating  sense  of  the  beautiful,  but  was  imbued  also 
with  a  reverential  love  of  the  good  and  true. 

From  the  authentic  extrinsic  evidence  of  his  life  and  the 
resistless  intrinsic  evidence  of  his  imperishable  works,  of 
such  a  lofty  nature,  was,  I  verily  believe,  the  soul  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe. 

And  surely  we  can  appreciate  the  better  his  exquisite 
poetry  and  read  with  increased  admiration  and  delight 
his  marvelous  prose  creations  if,  while  our  minds  and 
souls  are  aglow  with  their  beauty  and  power,  we  can  truly 
picture  their  author  as  the  unfortunate  victim 


62  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

Whom  unmerciful  disaster  followed  fast  and  followed 
faster 

but  all  the  while  pure  in  heart  and  undefiled  by  the 
deadly  pollution  of  immorality  and  vice. 

And  so,  too,  on  the  other  hand,  if  it  be  indeed  true  that 
the  life  of  this  man  of  transcendent  powers  was  disfigured 
by  deplorable  lapses  from  the  path  of  honor  and  virtue, 
which  justice  requires  us  to  censure  and  condemn,  may  we 
not  in  our  own  hours  of  weakness  and  failure — of  pitiable 
yieldings  to  temptation — of  gloom  and  despondency  be 
stimulated  to  renewed  and  continuous  struggle  out  of 
darkness  into  light  by  the  knowledge  that  he,  even  in  the 
immensity  of  his  vastly  superior  gifts,  was  unable  to 
stand  where  we  fell  ? 

And  in  the  study  of  his  shortcomings  may  we  not  find 
for  ourselves  hope  and  encouragement  in  our  strivings 
after  the  kingdom  of  righteousness  and  peace. 

We  should  not,  then,  as  some  have  done,  dissociate 
Edgar  Allan  Poe,  the  poet,  from  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  the 
man,  and  whilst  extolling  the  one  with  the  highest  encom 
iums  turn  from  the  other  with  aversion  or  reproach. 

Rather  should  we  study  the  poet  and  the  man  together 
and  upon  the  gratifying  results  of  this  study  rest  his  right 
to  stand  upon  the  pinnacle  of  glory  where  for  all  time  the 
verdict  of  the  civilized  world  has  placed  him. 

Knowledge,  we  are  told,  is  like  the  mystic  ladder  in  the 
patriarch's  dream.  Its  base  rests  upon  the  primeval 
earth,  its  crest  is  lost  in  the  shadowy  splendor  of  the  em 
pyrean,  while  the  great  authors,  who  for  traditionary 
ages  have  held  the  chain  of  science  and  philosophy,  of 


A   CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  63 

poetry  and  erudition,  are  the  angels  ascending  and 
descending  the  sacred  scale,  maintaining,  as  it  were,  the 
communication  between  man  and  Heaven. 

In  this  view  we  need  not  wonder  at  the  instinctive  long 
ing  of  the  human  heart  for  a  close  and  sympathetic  inti 
macy  with  the  supremely  gifted  amongst  the  children  of 
men,  whose  transcendent  masterpieces  left  behind  them 
as  enduring  manifestations  of  their  genius,  are  a  never- 
failing  source  of  strength  and  consolation,  reminding  us 
of  humbler  clay  that  the  blessed  Evangely  of  surpassing 
harmony  and  beauty  which  they  ceaselessly  proclaim  may 
sooner  or  later  reach  even  to  the  least  of  us  and  lift  us  up 
at  last  to  our  kinship  with  the  sky. 

By  the  immeasurable  superiority  of  their  commanding 
influence  over  that  of  any  merely  physical  achievements 
they  justify  the  admiration  and  homage  they  inspire,  and 
create  an  irresistible  desire  to  transmit  their  name  and 
fame  to  future  generations  by  visible  memorials  in  their 
honor,  speaking  perpetually  to  the  eye  of  their  glory  and 
renown. 

By  so  much  as  dominion  over  the  mind  and  souls  of 
men  surpasses  all  other  dominion,  by  so  much  does  the 
power  of  the  supremely  endowed  author  exceed  in  per 
manent  ascendancy  that  of  all  other  earthly  power. 

Amongst  the  conspicuous  heroes  of  ancient  days  King 
David  stands  out  in  towering  superiority,  and  yet  pre 
eminent  as  he  was  in  State-craft  and  in  battle,  the  fruits 
of  his  victories  and  conquests  have  perished,  whilst  the 
exalting  influence  of  his  immortal  verse  shall  sway  man 
kind  until  time  shall  be  no  more. 


64  EDGAR   ALLAN   POE. 

It  softened  men  of  iron  mould, 

It  gave  them  virtues  not  their  own, 

No  ear  so  dull,  no  soul  so  cold 

That  felt  not,  fired  not  at  its  tone, 

Till  David's  lyre  grew  mightier  than  his  throne. 

I  shall  not  venture  upon  any  delineation  of  the  great 
gifts  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  nor  attempt  any  critical  analysis 
of  his  literary  genius. 

Such  a  task  is  beyond  my  feeble  powers,  and  after  what 
we  have  heard  today  would  be  both  presumptuous  and 
inexcusably  superfluous. 

Rather  let  me  give  you  some  estimates  of  controlling 
authority. 

Alfred  Tennyson  pronounces  Poe,  "The  literary  glory 
of  America,"  and  declares  that  "no  poet,  certainly  no 
modern  poet,  was  so  susceptible  to  the  impressions  of 
beauty  as  he. " 

Richard  Henry  Stoddard  tells  us  that,  "There  is  noth 
ing  in  English  literature  with  which  the  stories  of  Poe  can 
be  compared,"  and  that  "No  modern  poet  except  Tenny 
son  is  so  subtly  and  strangely  suggestive. " 

Mrs.  Browning,  fascinated  and  stirred  by  his  power, 
exclaims,  "This  vivid  writing!  this  power  which  is  felt!" 

James  Russell  Lowell's  judgment  (given  in  Poe's  life 
time)  is  that  "It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  living  author  who 
has  displayed  such  varied  power.  As  a  critic  he  has 
shown  so  superior  an  ability  that  we  cannot  but  hope 
to  collect  his  essays  and  give  them  a  durable  form. 

We  could  refer  to  many  of  his  poems  to  prove  that  he 
is  the  possessor  of  a  pure  and  original  vein. 

His  tales  and  essays  have  equally  shown  him  a  master 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  65 

in  prose.  He  has  that  admirable  something  which  men 
have  agreed  to  call  "genius." 

From  John  Burroughs  we  learn  that  the  keener  appre 
ciation  in  Europe  of  literature  as  a  fine  art  is  no  doubt  the 
main  reason  why  Poe  is  looked  upon  over  there  as  our 
most  noteworthy  poet.  Poe  certainly  had  a  more  con 
summate  art  than  any  other  American  singer." 

According  to  Prof.  W.  Minot,  "  There  are  few  English 
writers  of  this  century  whose  fame  is  likely  to  be  more 
enduring.  The  feelings  to  which  he  appeals  are  simple 
but  universal  and  he  appeals  to  them  with  a  force  that 
has  never  been  surpassed." 

In  the  opinion  of  the  London  Spectator,  "Poe  stands 
as  much  alone  among  prose  writers  as  Salvator  Rosa 
among  painters." 

A.  Conan  Doyle  acknowledges  him  as  " the  inventor 
and  pioneer  whom  he  has  humbly  followed,"  and  the 
readers  of  Gaborieau  will  find  in  his  writings  the  strong 
incense  of  the  deep  worship  which  shows  itself  in  imita 
tion. 

Discussing  this  Centennial  celebration  of  his  birth,  the 
gifted  editor  of  the  Outlook  declares  him  to  be  one  of 
the  three  foremost  figures  in  American  literature. 

Hamilton  Wright  Mabie  gives  it  as  "his  deliberate 
judgment  that  distinctively  and  in  a  unique  sense  he  is 
the  artist  in  our  literature.  His  work  holds  first  place." 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier  tells  us,  "The  extraordinary 
genius  of  Edgar  Poe  is  now  acknowledged  the  world 
over." 

And  from  George  E.  Woodberry  we  learn  that,  "On 
the  roll  of  our  literature  Poe's  name  is  inscribed  with  the 


66  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

few  foremost,  and  in  the  world  at  large  his  genius  is  estab 
lished  as  valid  among  all  men. " 

But  why  multiply  the  estimates  of  authorized  expo 
nents  of  literary  supremacy,  or  reproduce  the  eulogiums 
of  the  recognized  arbiters  of  literary  preeminence? 

The  simple  fact  that  in  England  and  America  his  works 
in  verse  and  prose  are  now  by  common  consent  amongst 
the  highest  and  best  of  our  classics,  and  that  the  litera 
ture  of  every  tongue  in  Europe  has  been  enriched  by 
translations  of  his  acknowledged  master-pieces  tells  with 
conclusive  force  the  story  of  his  preeminence  and  fully 
accounts  for  the  deep  and  permanent  hold  which  his 
genius  has  taken  upon  the  civilized  world. 

Cultivated  and  uncultivated  alike  feel  and  acknowledge 
its  irresistible  influence. 

He  enjoys  the  unique  distinction  to  which  very  few 
writers  can  justly  lay  claim,  of  being  supremely  great  in 
poetry  and  prose  alike. 

In  this  phenomenal  particular  he  stands  side  by  side 
with  Milton,  the  ter-centennary  of  whose  birth  has  recently 
been  celebrated  with  such  imposing  ceremonies. 

And  there  is,  too,  a  sad  similarity  in  the  pecuniary  re 
wards  of  their  immortal  work. 

For  his  Paradise  Lost  Milton  is  said  to  have  received  the 
amazingly  munificent  price  of  five  pounds,  while  for  The 
Raven  a  reluctant  purchaser  was  found  willing  to  risk 
on  it  the  extravagant  sum  of  ten  dollars. 

Here,  at  home,  it  is  a  source  of  gratification  that  a  just 
pride  in  what  he  so  superbly  and  so  successfully  did  for 
American  literature  has  been  aroused,  bent  on  making 
his  works  more  and  more  familiar  to  all  classes  of  our 
people. 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  67 

Apart  from  the  striking  power  they  display  they  are 
worthy  of  all  this  awakened  interest  as  rare  models  of 
perfect  purity  of  thought  as  well  as  of  expression  and 
style. 

Indeed,  one  of  his  best  claims  to  admiration  is  that 
nowhere  in  his  writings  can  be  found  an  impure  line  and 
this  eloquent  and  significant  fact  should  go  far  to  convince 
those  who  may  still  have  a  lingering  doubt  as  to  his  general 
rectitude  that  the  harsh  strictures  upon  his  character, 
malevolently  promulgated  by  Griswold  are  cruelly  untrue. 
The  stern  exigencies  of  his  situation  compelled  Poe  to 
write  for  his  daily  bread,  but  his  spirit  chafed  under  this 
dire  necessity  so  injurious  to  the  perfect  manifestation  of 
his  best  and  loftiest  powers. 

The  leaden  weights  of  earth  stayed  many  a  majestic 
flight  of  his  genius  into  the  aerial  realms  of  purest  phan 
tasy,  but  perpetually  tempted  and  tortured  as  he  was, 
he  maintained  with  unshaken  loyalty  his  allegiance  to  his 
lofty  conceptions  of  the  truth  and  never  bartered  the  inde 
pendent  judgments  of  his  royal  intellect  for  profit  or 
applause. 

He  was  intensely  eager  to  acquire  high  distinction  in 
what  he  called,  "the  widest  and  noblest  field  of  human 
ambition." 

To  his  friend,  Mrs.  Gove-Nichols,  he  said,  "I  love 
fame!  Fame!  Glory!  They  are  life-giving  breath  and 
living  blood.  No  man  lives  unless  he  is  famous!" 

A  large  measure  of  what  he  so  keenly  coveted  came  to 
him  in  his  life-time,  but  without  its  substantial  fruits,  and 
since  his  death  atonement  has  been  made  and  will  con 
tinue  to  be  made  without  ceasing  for  the  unfortunate 
neglect  of  his  own  day  and  generation. 


68  EDGAR   ALLAN  POE. 

As  the  clouds  of  his  last  days  were  gathering  around  him 
I  can  fancy  I  hear  him  murmuring: 

I  twine 

My  hopes  of  being  remembered  in  my  line 
With  my  land's  language;  if  too  fond  and  far 
These  aspirations  in  their  scope  incline — 
If  my  fame  should  be  as  my  fortunes  are 
Of  hasty  growth  and  blight;  and  dull  oblivion  bar 
My  name  from  out  the  temple  where  the  dead 
Are  honored  by  the  nations — let  it  be — 
And  light  the  laurels  on  a  loftier  head, 
And  be  the  Spartan's  epitaph  on  me, 
"Sparta  hath  many  a  worthier  son  than  he." 

The  doors  of  our  Metropolitan  "Hall  of  Fame"  are 
not  yet  wide  enough  to  admit  his  sculptured  image  and 
there  is  no  panel  on  its  walls  for  the  inscription  of  his  name 
but  he  needs  no  such  recognition  of  the  supremacy  of  his 
genius,  nor  will  "dull  oblivion"  bar  him  from  the  temple 
of  literary  glory  where  the  whole  world  worships. 

The  stream  of  time  which  washes  away  the  dissoluble 
fabrics  of  other  poets  flows  on  without  harm  to  the  ada 
mant  of  Shakespeare,  and  so  we  believe  that  as  the  cen 
turies  come  and  go  the  name  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  will  be 
uttered  with  steadily  increasing  admiration  and  praise 
by  millions  yet  unborn  as  peer  of  the  loftiest  of 

The  bards  sublime 
Whose  distant  footsteps  echo 
Through  the  corridors  of  time. 


A  SKETCH  OF  THE  LIFE  OF  EDGAR  ALLAN 

POE  FROM  THE  TESTIMONY  OF  HIS 

FRIENDS. 

MRS.    JOHN  C.    WRENSHALL. 

To  draw  attention  to  the  character  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
through  the  testimony  of  those  intimately  associated  with 
him  at  various  periods  of  his  tragic  life,  is  the  object  of 
this  sketch :  and  as  his  faults  have  been  dwelt  upon,  mis 
stated  and  magnified,  so  here  his  many  warm  friends, 
made  and  retained  in  both  private  and  public  relations, 
speak  for  him. 

For  the  date  and  place  of  Poe's  birth  reference  must  be 
made  to  newspapers  of  the  time.  In  the  absence  of  town 
registers,  of  church  books,  or  family  records  of  births, 
deaths  and  marriages,  press  notices  have  of  necessity  come 
to  be  accepted  as  evidence  of  such  events.  This  applies 
as  pertinently  to  persons  dwelling  in  their  permanent 
homes  as  to  the  leaders  of  the  Virginia  Comedians,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  David  Poe,  who  were  playing  at  the  Federal 
Street  Theatre  in  Boston  from  1806  to  1809. 

According  to  notices  in  The  Boston  Gazette,  Mrs. 
Poe  appeared  on  November  28,  1808,  as  Lydia  in  "The 
Sixty-Third  Letter" — a  musical  afterpiece.  No  further 
announcement  is  made  until  February  9,  1809,  when, 
under  the  head  of  theatrical  information,  appears  the 


70  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

following  paragraph:  "We  congratulate  the  frequenters 
of  the  theatre  upon  the  recovery  of  Mrs  Poe  .... 
This  charming  little  actress  will  make  her  appearance 
tomorrow  night  as  Rosamunda  in  the  popular  play  of 
'Abaellino,  The  Great  Bandit.' " 

It  is  claimed  that  2  Carvel  Street  is  the  house  in  which 
Poe  was  born,  and  it  was,  perhaps,  here  the  young  and 
beautiful  mother  painted  the  miniature  of  herself  which 
ever  remained  Poe's  dearest  possession — on  the  back  of 
which  she  wrote:  "For  my  little  son  Edgar,  who  should 
ever  love  Boston,  the  place  of  his  birth,  and  where  his 
mother  found  her  best  and  most  sympathetic  friends." 

A  few  months  after  the  birth  of  their  second  son,  Edgar, 
David  and  Elizabeth  Poe  commenced  their  wanderings 
anew,  playing  in  New  York  during  the  following  winter. 
In  the  summer  of  1810  they  went  South,  the  Richmond 
papers  recording  Mrs.  Poe  as  then  playing  in  that  city, 
David  still  piping  as  Elizabeth  sang  and  danced,  till  the 
play  was  played  out  for  the  poor  comedian  in  Norfolk, 
where  David  Poe  died  in  iSn.1  Illness  was  now  fast 
wearing  Mrs.  Poe's  nearly  exhausted  strength,  but  her 
unconquerable  will  permitted  not  her  giving  up  the  struggle 
until  December  n,  when  the  Enquirer  chronicled  her 
death. 

The  eldest  child  had  been  sent  some  time  previously 
to  his  grandfather,  General  Poe,  in  Baltimore,  and  the 
younger  children,  Edgar  and  Rosalie,  were  at  once  taken 
by  Mr.  Mackenzie,  a  well  known  citizen  of  Richmond,  to 
his  home,  and  his  family  adopted  the  baby  girl.  Mr. 
John  Allan,  a  merchant  of  the  same  city,  yielding  reluc- 

1  James  A.  Harrison  "The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  Virginia  Edition. 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  71 

tantly  to  the  pleadings  of  Mrs.  Allan,  consented  to  take 
Edgar,  not  quite  two  years  of  age.  The  children  were 
then  baptized  Edgar  Allan  and  Rose  Mackenzie. 

In  an  effort  to  better  his  fortunes  Mr.  Allan  went 
abroad  in  1815,  to  establish  a  branch  house  of  Ellis  & 
Allan  in  England,  where  with  his  wife  and  Edgar  he 
remained  for  five  years. 

That  nothing  was  lost  upon  him  of  the  historic  memo 
ries  and  poetical  associations  of  his  surroundings  at  the 
school  in  the  old  Manor  House,  where  the  little  boy  was 
placed,  is  proved  by  the  story  which  Poe  thought  "his 
best,"  "  William  Wilson,"  written  nineteen  years  after  he 
had  passed  for  the  last  time  through  the  "tall  iron  gates." 

In  1820  the  Allans  returned  to  Richmond,  taking  their 
adopted  son  with  them,  where  for  some  months  they  made 
their  home  with  the  family  of  Mr.  Ellis,  Mr.  Allan's 
partner.  In  T.  H.  Ellis,  the  son  of  this  household,  Edgar 
found  a  friend,  who  in  later  years  wrote  of  Poe:  "He  was 
very  beautiful,  yet  brave  and  manly  for  one  so  young. 
No  boy  ever  had  a  greater  influence  over  me  than  he  had. 
He  was  indeed,  a  leader  among  his  playmates;  but  my 

admiration  for  him  scarcely  knew  bounds 

He  taught  me  to  swim,  to  shoot,  to  skate,  to  play  bandy." 

Another  companion  of  Poe,  also  intimate  with  him  in 
after  years,  was  Creed  Thomas,  his  deskmate  at  Burke's 
Academy,  whom  Dr.  Harrison  quotes  as  follows:  "Poe 
was  a  quiet,  peaceful  youngster,  and  seldom  got  into  a 
difficulty  with  his  schoolmates.  He  was  as  plucky  as 
any  boy  at  school,  however,  and  never  permitted  himself 
to  be  imposed  upon." 

Thomas  was  a  member  of  the  Thespian  Society  to 


72  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

which  Poe  belonged,  but  to  which  Mr.  Allan  objected;  he 
also  belonged  to  the  Junior  Morgan  Riflemen,  in  which 
Poe  was  a  lieutenant.  When  Lafayette  visited  Richmond, 
this  company  was  selected  as  his  body-guard,  and  Ellis 
tells  how  he  admired  Poe  as  he  kept  guard  when  the  old 
General  held  his  reception  in  the  autumn  of  1824.  Dur 
ing  this  time  as  a  boy  of  fourteen,  Poe  wrote  the  imperish 
able  lines  To  Helen,  inspired  by  Mrs.  Jane  Stith  Stanard, 
the  mother  of  his  most  intimate  friend. 

In  1825,  Mr.  Allan,  who  had  come  into  a  legacy  from 
his  uncle,  Mr.  Gault,  bought  a  handsome  place,  its  atten 
dant  surroundings  bringing  the  life  of  luxury  which  has 
been  ascribed  to  Poe's  childhood.  Poe,  now  about  six 
teen,  admired  greatly  a  young  girl,  Sarah  Elmira  Royster. 
Of  him  she  wrote  later,  "He  was  a  gentleman  in  every 
sense  of  the  word.  He  was  one  of  the  most  fascinating 
and  refined  men  I  ever  knew."  Mr.  Allan  and  Mr.  Roy 
ster  objected  to  the  love  affair,  on  the  ground  of  the  exceed 
ing  youth  of  both  parties,  and  after  Poe  left  for  the  Uni 
versity  Mr.  Royster  intercepted  his  letters,  and  the  young 
lady  at  seventeen  married  Mr.  Shelton  of  Richmond. 

On  the  fourteenth  day  of  February,  1826,  Poe  matric 
ulated  at  the  University  of  Virginia,  having  just  passed 
his  seventeenth  birthday.  Under  the  new  system  of 
elective  studies  he  entered  the  schools  of  Ancient  and 
Modern  Languages,  and  remained  at  the  University  until 
the  close  of  the  same  year.  His  career  was  much  as  that 
of  other  students,  he  played  cards,  idled,  and  drank 
"peach  and  honey,"  but  though  in  this  year  of  1826 stu 
dents  were  censured,  and  so  entered  on  the  books  of  the 
University,  Poe's  name  only  appears  when  signing  the 


A    CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  73 

minutes  of  the  Jefferson  Society,  of  which  he  was  the 
secretary.  And  again,  when  leaving  one  month  before 
his  eighteenth  birthday,  he  carried  with  him  all  the 
honors  it  was  possible  for  him  to  attain,  as  shown  by  the 
faculty  minutes.  "  Distinctions"  were  the  highest  marks 
given  at  that  time  by  the  University,  graduation  belonged 
to  a  much  later  period  and  the  marks  received  by  Poe 
would  later  have  entitled  him  to  a  diploma  in  Latin  and 
French. 

Among  his  friends  during  that  year  were  T.  G.  Tucker, 
William  M.  Burwell,  Upton  Beale,  Philip  Slaughter, 
Philip  St.  George  Ambler,  John  Willis  andWilliam  Werten- 
baker,  the  latter — librarian  of  the  University  for  forty- 
three  years — was  in  the  same  classes  with'  Poe  and  wrote : 
"I  am  sure  I  will  always  tenderly  cherish  my  recollections 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe."  To  Tucker  and  other  friends 
gathered  in  his  little  room,  No.  13,  West  Range,  Poe 
read  the  early  productions  of  his  youth,  and  it  is  said  that 
those  who  were  so  fortunate  as  to  hear  these  impromptu 
readings  never  forgot  them.2 

Returning  to  Mr.  Allan's  home  in  Richmond  was  not 
an  especially  happy  event  for  Poe,  "the  distinctions" 
not  counterbalancing  his  offense  in  making  debts  at  cards. 
These  debts  Poe  insisted  upon  paying,  but  Mr.  Allan 
refused  to  do  so  and  Poe  rashly  left  his  home.  In  May, 
1827,  he  enlisted  in  Boston  in  the  United  States  Army 
under  the  name  of  Edward  A.  Perry. 

A  few  weeks  later  a  tiny  book  of  forty  pages,  giving 
Poe's  collected  poems,  appeared  in  Boston  as:  "Tamer 
lane  and  Other  Poems.  By  a  Bostonian.  Boston:  Cal- 

2  Harrison  "The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  Virginia  Edition. 


74  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

vin  F.  S.  Thomas,  Printer."  Only  forty  copies  were 
issued,  and  a  very  few  have  survived.  One  copy  sold  at 
auction  in  New  York,  November,  1900,  for  $2050,  and 
was  immediately  resold  for  $2550. 

In  the  army  Poe  won  the  confidence  and  respect  of  his 
superiors,  before  he  was  discharged  receiving  the  appoint 
ment  of  sergeant-major — an  unusual  promotion  for  one 
so  young.  Mrs.  Allan,  his  adopted  mother,  dying  in 
February,  1829,  a  furlough  was  applied  for,  and  shortly 
afterward  Poe  returned  to  his  home.  The  remarkable 
service  rendered  in  the  artillery  together  with  his  unblem 
ished  record  pointed  with  no  uncertainty  to  the  propriety 
of  his  receiving  an  appointment  to  West  Point.  Mr. 
Allan,  softened  by  the  death  of  his  wife,  who  was  always 
tenderly  attached  to  Poe,  obtained  Poe's  discharge,  which 
was  received  on  April  15,  1829,  with  highly  commenda 
tory  letters  from  his  commanding  officers,  which  are  on  file 
in  the  War  Department,  Washington.3 

Again  with  Mr.  Allan,  their  differences  were  somewhat 
effaced  by  the  fine  record  of  the  young  soldier,  and  happier 
relations  were  in  a  degree  restored.  Mr.  Allan  furthered 
Poe's  inclination  to  enter  West  Point  by  using  all  the 
influence  he  possessed.  He  wrote  to  the  Secretary  of 
State,  but  the  tone  of  the  letters  betray  the  lack  of  warm 
interest  which  might  have  been  expected. 

Early  in  1829  the  second  edition  of  Poe's  poems  was 
published  by  Hatch  and  Dunning  of  Baltimore.  The 
title  page  was  as  follows:  "Al  Aaraaf.  Tamerlane  and 
Minor  Poems.  By  Edgar  A.  Poe.  Baltimore:  Hatch 
&  Dunning.  1829."  In  the  middle  of  the  reverse  side 

3  Woodberry:  "Life  of  E.  A.  Poe."     1909. 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  75 

of  the  title  page  is  "Copyright  secured.  Matchett  & 
Woods,  Printers."  "Tamerlane"  had  been  entirely 
rewritten,  and  some  of  the  minor  poems  together  with 
"Al  Aaraaf"  had  been  singing  themselves  into  words 
during  the  two  years  of  artillery  service. 

Poe's  acquaintance  with  John  Neal,  to  whom  he  dedi 
cated  "Tamerlane"  dates  from  his  visit  to  Baltimore  to 
arrange  for  this  book,  and  the  correspondence  between 
them  is  published  in  Neal's  paper,  "The  Yankee  and 
Boston  Literary  Gazette."  With  it  are  two  poems  by 
Poe  not  hitherto  found  among  his  works,  but  which  Dr. 
Harrison  gives  in  the  "Virginia  Edition." 

More  than  fifteen  months  elapsed  after  leaving  the 
army  before  the  commission  for  West  Point  was  received, 
and  in  obtaining  it  as  much  influence  was  exerted  by 
Poe's  military  record  as  by  the  letters  which  he  secured 
from  prominent  Virginians.  On  July  i ,  1 830,  Poe  entered 
the  Military  Academy,  and  from  the  first  stood  high  in  his 
studies:  third  in  French  and  seventeenth  in  mathematics 
in  a  class  of  eighty-seven,  but  in  singular  contradiction  to 
his  devotion  to  his  duties  while  in  the  artillery,  he  neglected 
and  disobeyed  the  regulations  of  West  Point. 

For  this  much  dwelt  upon  episode  in  Poe's  life,  his 
dismissal  from  the  Academy,  the  most  that  investigation 
elucidates  is  that  he  sought  it,  choosing  no  flagrant  offense 
as  a  means  of  obtaining  his  release,  but  simply  the  omission 
of  daily  duties  exacted  by  the  severe  discipline  of  the 
Academy.  Circumstances  had  greatly  changed  for  Poe 
since  entering  in  July.  Mr.  Allan  had  married  again, 
and  Poe  felt  he  would  from  henceforth  be  an  outsider  in 
the  new  family,  with  a  penniless  future  except  for  the 


76  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

inadequate  army  pay.  Literature  was  appealing  to  him 
with  strengthening  force,  and  apparently  undisturbed  by 
the  knowledge  that  official  action  would  be  taken  upon 
his  conduct,  he  completed  arrangements  for  the  third 
edition  of  his  poems,  dedicating  it:  "To  the  U.  S.  Corps  of 
Cadets."  The  young  men  had  largely  subscribed  to  the 
book,  and  upon  receiving  it  found  ample  opportunity  for 
the  exercise  of  their  youthful  powers  of  criticism.  The 
tragic  tone  was  not  to  their  taste  and  aroused  their  amuse 
ment  and  ridicule,  the  impression  then  made  lingering 
long  with  the  readers.  The  volume  was  a  considerable 
advance  over  the  two  that  had  preceded  it,  the  develop 
ment  of  Poe's  critical  taste  being  apparent  in  the  re-writ 
ing  and  strengthening  of  the  poems,  eight  of  which  may 
be  largely  ascribed  to  the  latter  half  of  1829  and  1830. 
A  Paen,  written  in  his  sorrow  for  the  death  of  Mrs.  Allan, 
belongs  to  the  earlier  part  of  this  period. 

According  to  the  statement  of  his  roommate,  T.  H. 
Gibson,  Poe  resigned  and  left  the  Academy  in  December 
anticipating  the  court  martial  to  be  called  in  January  for 
all  offenders.  This  was  held  January  28,  when  Poe  was 
tried  and  dismissed  for  "disobedience  to  orders  and 
absence  from  roll  calls,  guard  duty,  and  class  work,"  the 
sentence  taking  effect  March  6,  1831. 

Exactly  three  months  later  Poe  wrote  from  Richmond 
to  William  Gwynn,  Editor  of  the  Federal  Gazette  and 
Baltimore  Advertizer,  asking  for  any  employment  that  he 
could  give,  but  this  gentleman  was  either  not  able,  or  did 
not  choose  to  furnish  it.  In  this  letter  there  is  total 
absence  of  any  word  of  complaint  because  of  Mr.  Allan's 
withdrawal  of  protection,  further  than  stating  the  facts. 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  77 

Little  is  known  of  Poe's  surroundings  through  the  next 
two  years.  Harper's  for  March,  1899,  brought  to  light 
some  reminiscences  of  Augustus  Van  Cleef  which  shows 
Poe  living  in  Baltimore  during  this  time  with  his  aunt, 
Mrs.  Clemm,  and  tells  of  a  transitory  love  affair  between 
Poe  and  his  "Mary,"  a  fair  Baltimore  girl,  with  little 
Virginia,  a  child  of  ten,  carrying  notes  to  and  fro.  That 
he  continued  to  write  diligently  in  the  poverty  to  which 
Mr.  Allan  had  consigned  him  is  proved  by  the  material 
ready  when,  in  1833,  The  Baltimore  Saturday  Visitor 
opened  its  columns  to  the  famous  prize  contest  for  poems 
and  stories,  in  which  Poe  entered  "The  Tales  of  the 
Folio  Club."  One  of  these  tales,  "The  Manuscript 
Found  in  a  Bottle"  was  awarded  the  one  hundred  dollar 
prize  with  an  accompanying  recommendation  "to  publish 
all  the  tales  in  book  form."  Of  the  poems  offered  for  the 
contest  all  were  rejected  but  two;  one,  "The  Coliseum," 
was  in  the  same  unmistakably  beautiful  handwriting  as 
the  story  to  which  had  been  awarded  the  hundred  dollar 
prize;  the  other  poem  was  excellent  and  the  fifty  dollar 
prize  was  given  to  its  author,  John  H.  Hewitt,  of  Balti 
more. 

The  judges,  John  P.  Kennedy,  John  H.  B.  Latrobe, 
and  James  H.  Miller,  men  of  eminent  literary  ability, 
were  enthusiastic  in  their  encomiums  of  Poe's  work,  and 
Mr.  Latrobe  states;  "I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  the 
committee  may  not  have  been  biased  in  awarding  the 
fifty  dollar  prize  to  Mr.  Hewitt  by  the  fact  that  they 
had  already  given  the  hundred  dollar  prize  to  Mr.  Poe4. 
From  this  competition  dates  the  friendship  of  Mr.  Ken- 

'  Edgar  Allan  Poe  Memorial  Volume.    By  Sara  S.  Rice. 


78  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

nedy  for  Poe,  whom  he  introduced  to  Mr.  White,  editor 
and  proprietor  of  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  of 
Richmond. 

Mrs.  Clemm  was  now  living  at  No.  3  Amity  Street  and 
whatever  Poe  made  went  into  their  common  fund  of 
living.  The  city  limits  were  near,  and  Poe  with  his 
friend  L.  A.  Wilmer,  editor  of  The  Saturday  Visitor, 
often  taking  Virginia  with  them,  went  for  long  walks  in 
the  country.  The  two  men  became  fast  friends  and 
Wilmer  gallantly  defended  Poe,  when,  in  1859,  he  pub 
lished  a  book  entitled  "  Our  Press  Gang,  or  The  Crimes  of 
the  American  Newpapers." 

Mr.  Allan  died  in  Richmond  on  March  27,  1834. 
"  Shortly  before  this  event  Poe  called  at  his  house,  and  being 
told  by  Mrs.  Allan,  who  did  not  recognize  him,  that  the 
physicians  had  forbidden  her  husband  to  see  anyone,  he 
thrust  her  aside  and  walked  rapidly  to  Mr.  Allan's 
chamber;  on  his  entrance  Mr.  Allan  raised  his  cane  which 
he  used  to  walk  with,  and,  threatening  to  strike  him  if 
he  came  within  his  reach,  ordered  him  out,  a  command 
that  Poe  at  once  obeyed.5  This  was  the  so-called  violent 
scene  in  which  the  two  parted.  Mr.  Allan  left  three 
children ;  his  will  cut  off  any  lingering  hopes  of  inheritance 
Poe  may  have  indulged  in  and  threw  him  irretrievably  on 
his  own  resources. 

Again  in  Baltimore,  Poe  with  his  friend  Wilmer  planned 
a  literary  journal  whose  utterances  were  to  be  untram- 
meled  with  opinions  other  than  their  own,  the  first  note 
here  sounded  of  Poe's  wish  for  his  own  medium  of  expres 
sion,  henceforth  co-existent  with  his  life.  Nothing  came 

•  Woodberry  "Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe."     1909. 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  79 

of  their  efforts,  but  some  of  Poe's  stories  found  a  market 
in  Philadelphia  while  he  worked  for  Wilmer  and  Mr. 
Kennedy;  his  connection  with  the  Messenger  meantime 
strengthening. 

Three  years  in  Baltimore  had  now  gone  by,  during  which 
Poe  had  made  desperate  efforts  to  maintain  himself  by 
his  literary  work.  In  their  passing  athe  lovely  violet  eyed 
child  of  ten,"  Virginia,  who  Van  Cleef  wrote,  "Even 
then  loved  her  cousin  to  distraction,"  was  growing  into 
a  more  lovely  young  girl,  and  the  records  of  Baltimore 
City  show  that  a  license  was  granted  for  her  marriage  to 
Poe,  although  search  reveals  no  trace  of  the  ceremony 
having  been  performed. 

In  March,  1835,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Kennedy,  Poe 
seeks  his  influence  in  obtaining  an  appointment  as  teacher 
in  a  public  school  in  Baltimore.  Correspondence  with 
Mr.  White  a  few  weeks  later  shows  his  continued  active 
work  for  the  Messenger,  reference  to  these  letters  dis 
proving  the  allegation  that  Poe  never  praised  other  authors. 

In  August,  1835,  Poe  in  a  letter,  to  his  cousin  William 
Poe,  dated  from  Richmond,  tells  of  having  "lately  obtained 
the  editorship  of  the  Messenger."  The  first  mention  of 
Poe's  ill  health  is  made  at  this  time  when  he  writes  to  Mr. 
Kennedy  of  "a  depression  of  spirits  which  will  ruin  me 
should  it  long  continue." 

After  leaving  West  Point,  Poe  had  known  hunger  and 
want,  and  these  doubtless  undermined  in  youth  the  deli 
cate  constitution  inherited  from  his  parents.  That 
yielding  to  the  convivial  habits  of  the  day,  when  to  decline 
to  drink  with  companions  was  an  insult,  was  not  an 
established  habit  with  Poe  has  been  confirmed  by  many 


80  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

in  close  contact  with  his  daily  life,  though  his  physical 
weakness  and  exhaustion  may  have  sometimes  led  to 
"the  dangerous  conditions"  against  which  "Mr.  White 
warns  him." 

The  beginning  of  the  next  year  finds  Poe,  Mrs.  Clemm, 
and  Virginia  in  Richmond,  where,  upon  his  salary  of  $520 
a  year  increased  by  extra  work  to  about  $800,  he  had 
offered  them  a  home.  On  May  16, 1836,  Poe  was  married 
to  Virginia  by  the  Rev.  Amasa  Converse,  a  Presbyterian 
minister  and  editor  of  the  Southern  Religious  Telegraph* 

Around  the  first  first  few  months  of  their  marriage  some 
brightness  hovers.  Their  income  though  small  was 
certain,  and  confidence  in  his  mental  resources  spurred 
Poe  to  incredible  exertions.  His  work  in  the  Messenger 
proves  the  man  who  coined  this  wealth  from  his  brain 
guilty  of  no  habitual  excess  excepting  that  of  industry 
and  entire  disregard  of  his  own  mental  and  physical  wel 
fare.  It  was  now  that  "Joseph  Miller,  Esq."  made  his 
bow  in  the  opening  chapters  of  "Autography,"  Poe's 
humor,  never  to  be  extinguished,  bubbling  to  the  top  in 
these  brilliant  articles.  Poe  as  editor  of  The  Southern 
Literary  Messenger  raised  the  circulation  from  seven  hun 
dred  to  five  thousand  subscribers,  an  average  of  four  arti 
cles  from  his  pen  appearing  monthly —  tales,  essays,  poems 
and  alas!  the  fatal  critiques  that  brought  hosts  of  enemies 
to  undermine  him. 

In  the  January  number,  1837,  Mr.  White,  the  proprie 
tor  of  the  Messenger  announced  that  "Mr.  Poe,  who  has 
filled  the  Editorial  Department  with  so  much  ability, 
retired  from  that  station  on  the  3d  instant 

•Harrison  "The  Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe."     Virginia  Edition. 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  8 1 

Mr.  Poe,  however,  will  continue  to  furnish  its  columns 
from  time  to  time,  with  the  effusions  of  his  vigorous  and 
popular  pen.  It  is  perhaps  due  to  Mr.  Poe,  to  state  that 
he  is  not  responsible  for  any  of  the  articles  which  appear 
in  the  present  number,  except  the  reviews  of  'Byrant's 
Poems, 'George  Balcomb,'  'Irving's  Astoria,  'Reynold's 
Address  on  the  South  Sea  Expedition"  'Anthon's  Cicero,' 
the  first  number  of  'Arthur  Gordon  Pym,'  a  sea  story,  and 
two  poetical  effusions  to  which  his  name  is  prefixed." 
It  should  be  stated  that  fifteen  additional  columns  of 
"Arthur  Gordon  Pym"  appeared  in  the  February  num 
ber. 

More  lucrative  employment  was  now  accepted  by  Poe 
to  collaborate  with  Dr.  F.  L.  Hawkes  in  the  management 
of  the  New  York  Review,  Professors  Anthon  and  Henry 
being  co-editors  with  Dr.  Hawkes.  The  Poes  found 
shelter  in  New  York  in  a  very  poor  house,  113^  Carmine 
Street,  where  Mrs.  Clemm  took  boarders.  One  of  these, 
William  Gowans,  wrote  of  Poe:  "For  eight  months  or 
more  'one  house  contained  us,  as  one  table  fed,'  .  .  . 
I  never  saw  him  in  the  least  affected  with  liquor,  nor  ever 
descend  to  any  known  vice,  he  was  one  of  the  most 
courteous,  gentlemanly,  and  intelligent  companions  I 
have  met  with.7 

In  the  Carmine  Street  house  Poe  finished  "Arthur 
Gordon  Pym,"  published  in  book  form  in  July,  1838,  and 
reprinted  later  in  England.  The  hope  that  had  led  Poe 
to  New  York  soon  vanished,  and  in  the  autumn  of  1838 
the  little  family  bade  goodby  to  Carmine  Street  and  Mr. 
Gowans,  moving  to  Philadelphia,  where  they  lived  for 

'Ingram  "Life  and  Works  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe." 


82  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

six  years— the  happiest  time  of  Poe's  life.  They  took  a 
small  house  in  a  remote  part  of  the  city,  Spring  Garden, 
and  in  its  poor,  but  sweet  simplicity  seemed  to  have  made 
it  a  model  of  a  poet's  home.  Even  Griswold,  whose 
cherished  resentment  for  Poe's  criticism  of  his  poetry  was 
evidenced  in  every  misrepresentation  of  malice  of  the 
dead  and  defenseless  man,  could  not  deny  the  beauty 
and  the  love  in  the  home  in  Spring  Garden. 

Virginia's  ineffable  sweetness  is  again  and  again  men 
tioned  as  winning  all  hearts;  she  delighted  in  the  visits  of 
young  people  and  children  and  always  had  some  little 
gifts  for  the  latter.  Two  such  souvenirs  have  recently 
been  shown  the  writer.  One  a  small  perfume  bottle, 
the  other,  a  toy  goblet,  classic  in  shape  as  if  modeled  after 
some  ancient  Greek  design. 

T.  C.  Clarke,  first  editor  of  The  Saturday  Evening 
Post,  gives,  perhaps,  the  most  charming  picture  of  this 
home,  in  the  reminiscences  of  the  friendship  between 
Virginia  and  his  little  daughter  who  "was  fond  of  spend 
ing  the  day  with  her  favorite  friend  and  'enlivened'  the  hours 
with  her  childish  songs.  There  was  one  of  which  she 
hinted  knowledge  but  positively  refused  to  sing,  and  it 
was  not  until  after  repeated  solicitations  from  Virginia 
that  the  child  ventured  upon  'I  never  would  be  married, 
and  be  called  Mistress  Poe,  Goody  Poe.'  'Mistress  Poe' 
received  the  song  with  peal  on  peal  of  laughter,  and 
insisted  in  her  exhuberance  of  spirits  on  having  the  homely 
melody  repeated.  Upon  parting  Virginia  gave  the  child 
a  keepsake,  which  the  recipient  no  longer  a  child  now 
cherishes  in  memory  of  the  fair  and  gentle  donor,"8 

»  R.  H.  Stoddard. 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  83 

In  business  as  in  personal  relations,  Poe  made  many 
friends  in  Philadelphia.  In  a  letter  received  by  the 
writer  in  March,  1909,  mention  is  made  of  Robert  Dybale 
of  that  city,  "an  ardent  admirer  of  Poe's,  who  even  in  his 
darkest  days  would  never  permit  anyone  to  speak  slight 
ingly  of  him,  or  his  reputed  habits.  At  the  time  of  Poe's 
residence  in  this  city,  Mr.  Dybale  was  connected  with  the 
editorial  staff  of  The  Press,  then  learning  to  appreciate 
his  genius  and  brilliant  mind.  Poe  would  come  into  the 
office  and  perch  himself  on  the  table,  unroll  his  manu 
script,  and  read  his  articles  to  the  staff.  These  were 
never  submitted  for  inspection  before  being  sent  to  the 
printer,  inasmuch  that  they  were  written  in  a  faultless 
manner.  Poe  always  wrote  on  strips  of  paper  about  six 
inches  wide,  which  as  the  MS.  progressed  were  rolled  up, 
and  another  strip  pasted  on."  The  writer  of  the  letter, 
Mrs.  Robert  B.  Keesey,  of  Philadelphia,  adds:  "We  can 
readily  see  how  fortunate  it  was  for  the  'reader'  that  his 
services  were  not  needed,  for  I  doubt  if  he  could  have 
unrolled  and  rolled  as  Poe  did." 

In  1838-1839,  many  new  stories  from  Poe  appeared. 
The  American  Museum  of  Baltimore  gave  "Ligeia"  to  the 
public,  also  "Signora  Zenobia,"  "Scythe  of  Time," 
"A  Predicament,"  and  the  weird  glory  of  "The  Haunted 
Palace;"  and  Miss  Eliza  Leslie's  A  nnual  boasted  "William 
Wilson."  In  July,  1839,  William  E.  Burton,  proprietor 
of  The  Gentleman's  Magazine,  associated  Poe  with  him 
in  its  editing.  "The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher"  soon 
appeared  in  this  magazine,  followed  by  "The  Conversa 
tions  of  Eiros  and  Charmion"  (or  "The  Rainbow  and 
the  Dove")  the  latter  characterized  by  powers  of  specula 
tion  that  hold  the  reader  enthralled. 


84  EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

For  a  full  explanation  of  circumstances  attending  the 
publication  of  the  Manual  of  Conchology  the  reader  is 
referred  to  Harrison's  "Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  Virginia 
Edition,  p.  146.  It  suffices  here  to  say  that  the  work  was 
exploited  by  Professor  Wyatt,  Professor  MacMurtree  and 
Poe.  Wyatt  wished  to  get  out  a  popular  and  inexpensive 
edition  to  pay  for  loss  on  a  costly  work  that  would  not 
sell;  with  this  in  view  he  engaged  Poe  to  issue  the  former 
under  his  own  name.  Wyatt  was  far  more  responsible 
than  Poe  for  non-acknowledgment  of  Captain  Thomas 
Brown's  "Conchologist's  Text  Book,"  published  in 
Glasgow  in  1837,  from  which  the  first  twenty  pages  were 
drawn.  Poe,  too,  was  undoubtedly  in  the  wrong,  but 
Wyatt,  selling  the  book,  seems  to  have  escaped  the  censure 
that  fell  upon  the  unfortunate  young  man  who  with  super 
human  efforts  was  eking  out  in  any  direction  offering  his 
weekly  salary  of  ten  dollars;  this  regular  amount  just  in 
view  after  a  time  of  dependence  on  returns  from  contri 
butions  to  magazines. 

In  this  same  year  Poe's  "Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and 
Arabesque,"  were  published  in  two  volumes,  and  dedi 
cated  to  Col.  William  Drayton,  of  Philadelphia,  "With 
every  Sentiment  of  Respect,  Gratitude,  and  Esteem,  by 
his  obliged  Friend  and  Servant,  the  Author." 

The  relations  between  Burton  and  Poe  had  never  been 
agreeable,  they  quarreled  incessantly,  one  cause  of  dis 
agreement,  being  Poe's  unyielding  wish  and  efforts  for  a 
magazine  of  his  own,  which  had  progressed  as  far  as  the 
prospectus  issued  in  1840,  signed  by  Clarke  and  Poe. 
The  name  of  the  new  magazine  was  to  be  the  Penn  Mon 
thly,  and  Felix  O.  C.  Darley  was  to  furnish  original  designs 
for  its  illustrations. 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  8$ 

Despite  their  bickerings,  Burton  was  sufficiently  inter 
ested  in  Poe  to  request  that  his  young  editor  should 
be  retained  when  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  was  bought 
by  Mr.  Graham  and  merged  with  The  Casket,  the  two 
forming  Graham's  Magazine.  Poe  became  the  editor  of 
the  new  publication  and  Mr.  Graham  ever  remained  his 
devoted  friend. 

Poe's  cryptographic  challenge  sent  out  in  Alexander's 
Weekly  Messenger  of  Philadelphia  had  brought  innumer 
able  responses.  Over  these  he  had  worked  with  inex- 
haustable  patience  answering  almost  undecipherable 
tests,  many  languages  often  being  combined  in  one  cryp 
tograph.  This  unique  exhibition  of  his  singular  powers 
was  closed  by  an  article  from  his  pen  whch  appeared  in 
Graham's  in  July,  1841.  His  extraordinary  faculty  of 
reasoning  from  another's  mental  standpoint  still  further 
aroused  universal  astonishment  when,  in  The  Saturday 
Evening  Post,  of  May,  1841,  he  announced  a  prospective 
notice  of  "Barnaby  Rudge."  The  initial  chapters  of 
the  story  had  just  appeared,  from  them  Poe  deduced  the 
entire  plot,  and  correctly  presented  its  culmination.  The 
character  of  this  work,  without  the  vast  amount  other 
wise  accomplished,  silently  corroborates  statements  of 
Poe's  entire  abstinence  through  these  years. 

Graham's  Magazine  achieved  a  wonderful  success  under 
its  star  leader,  the  subscriptions  increasing  from  five  to 
thirty-seven  thousand.  In  April  of  1841  "The  Murders 
in  the  rue  Morgue"  appeared  in  Graham's  inaugurating 
a  school  to  which  many  great  writers  have  acknowledged 
their  indebtedness.  The  latest  of  these  tributes  was 
rendered  by  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  at  the  Poe  Centenary 


86  EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

celebration  by  the  Authors'  Club  of  London,  March  i, 
1909,  when  he  credited  the  inspiration  for  his  own  detec 
tive  stories  to  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

While  Poe  was  working  for  Graham,  he  was  contribut 
ing  to  The  Saturday  Evening  Post,  The  Lady1  s  Companion, 
The  Saturday  Museum,  The  United  States  Post,  The 
Dollar  Newspaper,  and  other  publications.  All  of  his 
work  was  clear  cut  and  shaped  to  its  pre-determined 
scheme;  no  detail  spared,  no  superfluous  word  written. 
The  relation  not  only  between  thoughts  and  words,  but 
between  words  themselves  was  so  perfectly  adjusted  that 
each  caught  lustre  from  the  other,  until  prose  and  poetry 
alike  shown  as  jewels  against  the  onyx  background  of  his 
sombre  fancy. 

With  Poe's  creative  and  critical  powers  going  at  tele 
graphic  speed,  Virginia's  life  was  at  lowest  ebb,  and 
though  he  worked  and  starved  it  was  impossible  to  meet 
the  demands  of  her  illness.  His  business  letters  show  his 
desperate  struggles  with  consuming  poverty,  though  not 
for  his  own  needs.  "He  seems  to  have  had  no  personal 
expenses,"  writes  Mr.  Graham.  "What  he  received 
from  me  went  directly  into  the  hands  of  his  mother-in-law 
for  family  comforts."  When  Poe's  letters  bore  on  his 
money  obligations,  anxiety  to  square  his  accounts  was 
always  first.  Withal,  that  his  generous  nature  was  not 
warped  is  revealed  in  a  letter  written  by  him  to  James 
Russell  Lowell,  in  which  Poe  forgives  Lowell  his  debt  and 
endeavors  to  encourage  and  cheer  him  in  his  struggle  in 
Boston  to  maintain  The  Pioneer. 

Poe's  efforts  for  his  own  magazine  again  come  to  light 
in  the  Philadelphia  Saturday  Museum  of  March  4,  1843, 


A   CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  87 

in  the  prospectus  of  The  Stylus  to  appear  in  July,  edited 
in  connection  with  T.  C.  Clarke,  and  illustrated  by  Darley. 
A  month  after  the  prospectus  was  published,  Poe's  edi 
torial  connection  with  Graham's  Magazine  was  severed, 
no  explanation  being  given  of  the  altered  relations  until 
1873,  when  in  conversation  with  Dr.  Harrison,  Mr. 
Graham  made  the  following  statement:  "Poe  never 
quarreled  with  him;  never  was  discharged  from  Graham's 
Magazine"  and  the  "  facts  of  Mr.  Poe's  secession  from 
Graham  were  as  follows  ....  Mr.  Poe  was 
from  illness  or  other  causes,  absent  for  a  short  time  from 
his  post  on  the  magazine,  a  temporary  arrangement  made 
with  Dr.  Griswold  to  act  as  Poe's  substitute  until  his 
return.  Poe  came  back  unexpectedly,  and,  seeing  Gris 
wold  in  his  chair,  turned  on  his  heel  without  a  word,  and 
left  the  office,  nor  could  he  be  persuaded  to  enter  it  again, 
although  he  sent  frequent  contributions  to  the  pages  of 
the  magazine."  Dr.  Harrison  adds  "  according  to  Gill, 
Griswold  himself,  was  shortly  afterwards  dismissed  by 
Mr.  Graham  from  the  editorship  of  the  magazine  for 
writing  a  scurrilous  anonymous  attack  on  Mr.  Charles  J. 
Peterson,  a  gentleman  prominently  connected  with  many 
American  magazines,  who  was  associated  with  Griswold 
in  the  same  office  apparently  on  the  friendliest  terms." 

"The  Gold  Bug"  written  for  Graham's  but  not  yet 
published,  was  returned  to  Poe,  in  accordance  with  his 
earnest  request;  he  entered  it  for  a  competitive  prize  and 
won  the  one  hundred  dollars  offered  by  the  Philadelphia 
Dollar  Magazine.  This  was  followed  in  August  of  the 
same  year,  1843,  by  "The  Black  Cat"  which  appeared  in 
The  Saturday  Post. 


88  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

The  great  amount  of  work  published  through  1844 
evidences  Poe's  unrelaxed  efforts  after  leaving  Graham, 
but  poor  pay,  the  uncertainty  of  daily  bread,  delays  and 
disappointments  in  deferred  publication,  the  over-speed 
ing  of  his  sensitive  brain,  the  alternations  of  hope  and  dis- 
pair  in  the  exceeding  and  prolonged  illness  of  Virginia, 
brought  bitter  suffering  to  the  three.  The  shadows  hung 
heavily,  close  and  dark  about  the  little  home  in  Spring 
Garden.  It  was  decided  to  return  to  New  York — the 
wider  field.  Virginia  temporarily  revived  and  Poe  took 
her  with  him  there.  His  letter  to  Mrs.  Clemm  written 
immediately  after  their  arrival  shows  in  every  word  the 
tender  affection,  trust  and  confidence  uniting  these  three 
poor  strugglers  with  fate. 

A  very  few  days  after  Poe  reached  New  York  his 
"  Balloon  Hoax"  appeared  in  the  New  York  Sun,  and 
like  others  of  his  stories  was  taken  as  a  fact  in  the  United 
States,  England  and  France.  Stories,  reviews  and  criti 
cisms  followed  in  quick  succession  in  Graham's,  Godey's, 
The  Columbian  Magazine,  The  Evening  Mirror,  The 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  and  The  Democratic 
Review.  A  position  on  the  staff  of  The  Evening  Mirror 
being  offered  by  its  editor,  N.  P.  Willis,  was  accepted  by 
Poe  and  filled  with  the  same  industry  and  devotion  to  the 
interests  of  his  employers  as  had  characterized  all  his 
previous  engagements. 

The  association  between  Poe  and  Willis  was  always 

harmonious,  of  it  Willis  wrote,  "In  our  harassing  days  of 

daily  editorship  Poe  for  a  long  time  was  our  assistant 

.     we  loved  the  man  for  the  entireness  of 

fidelity  with  which  he  served  us.    When  he  left  us  we 


A   CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  89 

were  very  reluctant  to  part  with  him With 

the  prospect  of  taking  the  lead  in  another  periodical,  he, 
at  last,  voluntarily  gave  up  his  employment  with  us."9 

It  was  The  Evening  Mirror  that  gave  the  public  the 
great  literary  excitement  of  the  day  by  the  publication  of 
"The  Raven"  on  January  igth,  1845.  It  was  copied 
by  permission  from  the  advanced  sheets  of  The  American 
Whig  Review  and  heralded  by  Willis  as  "the  most  effec 
tive  single  example  of  'fugitive  poetry'  ever  published  in 
this  country;  and  unsurpassed  in  English  poetry  for  subtle 
conception,  masterly  ingenuity  of  versification,  and  con- 
sistant  sustaining  of  imaginative  lift."  "The  Raven" 
appeared  again  in  the  February  number  of  The  Review,  in 
The  Broadway  Journal,  and  The  Southern  Literary 
Messenger]  variants  in  each  version.  Numerous  accounts 
exist  as  to  the  place  and  time  of  its  composition,  but  for  the 
most  probable  one  reference  must  be  made  to  Dr.  Harrison's 
"Virginia  Edition"  of  "Edgar  Allan  Poe,"  where  General 
James  R.  O'Beirne  is  quoted  as  follows:  "Edgar  Allan 
Poe  spent  the  summers  of  1843  and  1844  at  the  homestead 
of  my  father-in-law.  I  have  frequently  heard  the  story 
from  my  wife's  lips,  who  was  about  ten  years  old  when 
she  became  acquainted  with  the  great  poet.  In  those 
days,  more  than  half  a  century  ago,  Patrick  Brennan  (Mrs. 
O'Beirne's  father)  owned  a  farm  of  216  acres  extending 
from  a  point  about  200  feet  west  of  Central  Park  to  the 
Hudson  river.  It  was  a  picturesque  spot,  and  the  neigh 
boring  territory  was  considered  a  sort  of  summer  resort 
whither  a  number  of  persons  migrated  in  hot  weather." 

The  house  was  a  two  story  building,  low  to  the  ground, 

9  N.  P.  Willis:  "Memoir  Edgar  Allan  Poe." 


90  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

without  porch,  piazza  or  any  ornamentation,  and  was 
near  what  is  now  84th  Street  and  Broadway.  General 
O'Beirne  gives  a  description  of  the  "big  room"  where 
"above  the  door  opening  into  the  hallway,  stood  "the 
pallid  bust  of  Pallas."  "It  was  a  little  plaster  cast, 
and  occupied  a  shelf  nailed  to  the  door  casing  immedi 
ately  behind  the  bust,  and  occupying  the  space  between 
the  top  casing  and  the  ceiling;  a  number  of  little  panes 
of  smoky  glass  took  the  place  of  the  partition."  Mrs. 
Brennan,  to  whom  Poe  read  "The  Raven"  before  its 
publication,  denied  positively  all  charges  of  dissipation 
against  him,  and  Mrs.  O'Beirne  recalls  how  she  used  to 
lie  on  the  floor  at  Poe's  feet  arranging  his  manuscript  and 
always  carefully  reversing  it  from  the  way  he  preferred  to 
have  it,  placing  it  with  the  written  side  toward  the  floor. 

Poe's  engagement  with  The  Broadway  Journal,  the 
paper  to  which  Mr.  Willis  alluded,  began  with  the  opening 
of  1845.  Many  of  the  tales  and  poems  revised  and  pub 
lished  together  with  a  large  number  of  reviews  and  criti 
cisms  appeared  in  the  Journal,  and  the  charges  of  pla 
giarism  against  Longfellow  and  his  friends,  opened  in  The 
Evening  Mirror  January  i4th,  were  continued.  This 
most  unfortunate,  unnecessary  and  enduring  controversy 
aroused  bitter  resentment  against  Poe. 

Of  himself  at  this  time,  Poe  writes  to  Dr.  Creed  Thomas 
"For  the  last  three  or  four  months  I  have  been  working 
fourteen  or  fifteen  hours  a  day,  hard  at  it  all  the  time  . 
.  and  yet,  Thomas,  I  have  made  no  money,  I 
am  as  poor  now  as  ever  I  was  in  my  life  .  .  .  except 
in  hope,  which  is  by  no  means  bankable."  Wiley  &  Put 
nam  were  now  issuing  two  volumes  of  Poe's  works — the  first, 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE  9! 

twelve  tales:  the  second,  "The  Raven  and  Other  Poems." 
The  latter  volume  was  dedicated:  "To  the  Noblest  of 
Her  Sex— To  the  Author  of  'The  Drama  of  Exile'— To 
Miss  Elizabeth  Barrett  Barrett,  of  England,  I  Dedicate 
this  volume,  with  the  most  Enthusiastic  Admiration,  and 
with  the  most  Sincere  Esteem.— E.  A.  P." 

In  July,  Charles  Fenno  Hoffman  wrote  to  Griswold: 
"  The  Broadway  Journal  stopped  for  a  week  to  let  Briggs 
step  ashore  with  his  luggage,  and  they  are  now  getting  up 
steam  to  drive  it  ahead  under  Captains  Poe  and  Watson." 
In  October  Poe  bought  Bisco's  interest  for  $50.  At  last 
he  had  a  magazine  of  his  own.  There  was  though  but  a 
slim  chance  that  he  could  maintain  it;  this  he  took  and 
fought  as  he  always  did,  gallantly,  to  the  end.  The  sub 
scriptions  increased,  success  seemed  within  touch,  but 
he  could  not  meet  the  necessary  expenses.  He  wrote  to 
Griswold,  Kennedy,  Duyckink  and  his  cousin  George 
Poe  asking  for  help;  he  offered  to  take  a  large  discount  for 
money  owing  him,  but  all  of  no  avail.  Failing  to  keep  his 
poor  raft  afloat,  he  nailed  his  colors  to  the  masthead,  and 
on  December  26th,  1845,  announced  the  demise  of  The 
Broadway  Journal  and  his  farewell  as  editor  "as  cordially 
to  foes  as  to  friends." 

In  Godey's  Lady's  Book  of  May,  1846,  appeared  the 
author's  introduction  of  "The  Literati  of  New  York  City. 
Some  Honest  Opinions  at  random  respecting  their  Autorial 
Merits,  with  Occasional  Words  of  Personality."  For  the 
special  opportunities  enabling  him  to  write  of  those  so 
classed  we  must  turn  to  his  surroundings  since  his  arrival 
in  New  York.  That  city  was  then  justly  celebrated  for 
the  brilliant  evening  re- unions  held  in  the  homes  of  dis- 


Q2  EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 

tinguished  men  and  women  who  delighted  in  drawing 
about  them  the  litterateurs  of  the  day.  Poe  was  the  centre 
of  these  circles,  his  charm  of  manner  and  rare  conversa 
tional  powers  winning  general  admiration.  Mrs.  Whit 
man  through  letters  from  New  York  friends  gives  charm 
ing  pictures  of  him  in  these  salons.  One  writes:  "To 
hear  him  repeat  '  The  Raven'  which  he  does  very  quietly, 

is  an  event  in  one's  life His  smile  is 

captivating!" 

Poe's  fame  was  now  assured.  In  France  public  atten 
tion  was  first  directed  to  his  stories  through  a  controversy 
between  rival  journals  as  to  the  authorship  of  "The 
Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue."  The  plagiarism  of  the 
newspapers  being  exposed,  and  Poe  acknowledged  as 
the  writer,  "his  best  tales  were  translated  by  Mme. 
Isabelle  Mennier."10  .  From  all  this  he  received  only  the 
acclamations  of  those  who  became  the  members  of  his 
school,  among  them  notably  Gauthier  and  Baudelaire. 
In  England  his  mesmeric  studies  excited  profound  interest. 
"The  Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Valdemar"  was  published 
in  pamphlet  form  by  Short  &  Co.,  of  London,  1846,  under 
the  title  of  "  Mesmerism  in  Articulo  Mortis,"  accompanied 
by  press  notices  showing  that  it  was  accepted  as  a  state 
ment  of  events  actually  occurring. 

"The  Literati"  naturally  aroused  some  resentment,  but 
no  expression  of  this  was  voiced  until  Thomas  Dunn 
Brown  (English)  was  filled  with  so  deep  a  sense  of  injury 
that  he  published  a  venomous  and  libelous  reply.  Poe 
sued  him  for  defamation  of  character  and  received  a  ver 
dict  of  damages  of  $225.  In  the  spring  of  1846,  while  the 

»  Eugene  L.  Didier:  "The  Poe  Cult."     1909. 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE  93 

cherry  trees  were  still  in  bloom,  the  Poes  moved  from  the 
city  to  the  tiny  cottage  close  to  King's  Bridge  road,  on 
Fordham  Hill.  Here  they  found  some  happy  hours. 
Mrs.  Clemm's  care  was  over  all,  Virginia  made  wonder 
ful  results  in  artistic  effects  with  their  poor  little  house 
hold  belongings,  the  devoted  husband  by  his  own  efforts 
surrounded  their  tiny  cottage  with  the  flowers  he  loved 
and  with  birds,  free  and  caged,  to  which  with  other  pets 
he  was  ever  gentle  and  kind.  Alas !  it  soon  became  evi 
dent  that  Virginia  was  dying.  With  the  passing  summer 
dire  want  hemmed  in  the  young  wife,  the  uncomplaining 
striving  mother,  and  the  hard  working,  frantic  husband, 
who  for  many  weeks  was  too  ill  to  write  or  even  to  leave 
the  house.11  Hope  had  almost  turned  away  her  face, 
yet  love  survived  as  witnessed  by  the  tender  letter  from 
Poe  to  Virginia  when  he  was  unexpectedly  detained  in 
New  York. 

The  autumn  added  cold  to  sufferings  at  Fordham.  A 
kind  friend,  Mrs.  Gove-Nichols,  together  with  Mrs. 
Shew,  Mrs.  Hewitt  and  others,  somewhat  alleviated  their 
need.  N.  P.  Willis  heard  of  the  desperate  conditions 
met  and  endured  with  such  fortitude,  and  appealed  to  the 
public  in  their  favor.  Poe  replied  thanking  Willis  "for 
his  kind  and  manly  comments  in  the  Home  Journal" 
acknowledges  his  wants  and  privations,  but  waived  the 
assistance  that  his  pride  so  bitterly  resented. 

The  old  year  passed  out  and  the  new  one  found  Vir 
ginia  still  living.  On  the  2Qth  of  January,  1847,  Poe 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Shew  "  My  poor  Virginia  yet  lives  . 

May  God  grant  her  life  until  she  sees  you  and  thanks 

11  The  Century  Magazine  February,  1903. 


94  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

you  once  again  ....  Lest  she  may  never  see 
you  more  ....  she  bids  me  say  that  she  sends 
you  her  sweetest  kiss  of  love  and  will  die  blessing  you. 
But  come, — oh  come  tomorrow!"  Upon  that  morrow 
the  gentle  creature  entered  into  Paradise. 

For  months  Poe  was  as  one  distraught,  inspiration  and 
incentive  removed  he  was  ill  unto  death,  sleepless  except 
when  his  "more  than  Mother"  sat  beside  his  bed,  her 
hand  upon  his  weary  head  in  the  tender  communion  of 
mutual  loss.  It  was  then  his  heart  wrote  the  lines  "To 
My  Mother,"  which  hold  in  crystal  clear  his  love  for  the 
undaunted  spirit  of  Maria  Poe  Clemm. 

Through  the  year  following  Virginia's  death  Poe  seldom 
left  the  cottage  except  to  wander  over  the  surrounding 
country,  from  Virginia's  grave  to  the  great  arched  acque- 
duct,  to  the  rocky  height  of  Mt.  Tom  from  where  he 
could  gaze  over  the  blue  Hudson,  and  through  the  thick 
woods  back  to  the  little  piazza,  pacing  to  and  fro  in  front 
of  the  door  from  which  Virginia  had  been  carried  forth. 
He  drank  the  lees  of  sorrow,  but  from  their  bitterness  his 
spirit  was  strengthened  to  conceive  his  most  exalted  work 
"  Eureka,"  the  forecasting  for  eternity.  Towards  the 
close  of  the  year  "Ulalume"  was  written  and  first  pub 
lished  in  The  American  Whig  Review  for  December. 
Of  this  poem  Edmund  Gosse  has  said:  " The  three  lyrics 
which  must  be  regarded  as  having  the  most  permanent 
effect  upon  subsequent  literature  not  in  England  merely, 
but  in  France,  are  'Ulalume,'  ' Annabel  Lee,'  and  'For 
Annie.' "  The  same  writer  advances  Poe's  first  claim  to 
commemoration  being  that  "he  restored  to  poetry  a 
primitive  faculty  of  which  civilization  seems  successfully 


A  CENTENARY   TRIBUTE  95 

to  have  deprived  her  .  .  .  .  as  the  discoverer 
and  the  founder  of  symbolism."12 

The  revived  hope  of  a  publication  of  his  own,  The 
Stylus,  was  again  leading  Poe,  and  to  further  this  he 
gave  "Eureka,"  as  a  lecture  in  New  York.  Though 
aided  by  his  ever  faithful  friend,  N.  P.  Willis,  the  effort 
was  a  failure;  those  who  came  to  hear  it  listened  spell 
bound  for  three  hours.  "Poe  appeared  inspired,  .  . 
.  .  his  eyes  seemed  to  glow  like  those  of  his  own 
'Raven,'"  but  the  audience  consisted  of  sixty  persons 
instead  of  the  several  hundred  expected.  "Eureka"  was 
published  by  Putnam  in  1848,  the  small  edition  of  five 
hundred  copies  proving  more  than  adequate  for  the 
demand. 

In  the  summer  of  this  year,  while  on  a  brief  visit  to 
Mrs.  Shew,  the  first  two  stanzas  of  "The  Bells"  were 
written— "The  silver  bells"  and  "The  heavy  iron 
bells."  Immediately  after  finishing  them  Poe  fell  into  a 
deep  sleep  that  lasted  twelve  hours,  alarming  his  hostess, 
who  called  in  a  neighboring  physician.  He  confirmed 
her  opinion,  formed  from  her  own  medical  education,  of 
the  permanent  injury  to  the  brain  with  which  Poe  was 
suffering,  and  which  would  not  permit  him  to  use  stimu 
lants  or  tonics  without  producing  insanity. 

Poe's  fateful  love  for  Mrs.  Whitman  came  like  a  meteor 
of  destruction  in  this  autumn  of  1848,  further  unsettling 
the  worn  and  nervous  man.  Mrs.  Whitman  in  a  letter 
to  William  F.  Gill,  of  London,  dated  August,  1873, 
records:  "No  such  scene  as  that  described  by  Dr.  Gris- 
wold  ever  transpired  in  my  presence.  No  one,  certainly, 

a  Edmund  Gosse:    The  Contemporary  Review.    February,  1909. 


g6  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

no  woman,  who  had  the  slightest  acquaintance  with 
Edgar  Poe,  could  have  credited  the  story  for  an  instant. 
He  was  essentially,  and  instinctively  a  gentleman,  utterly 
incapable,  even  in  moments  of  excitement  and  delirium, 
of  such  an  outrage  as  ascribed  to  him.  No  one  acquain 
ted  with  Edgar  Poe  could  have  given  Dr.  Griswold's 
scandalous  anecdote  a  moment's  credence." 

Through  1848  Poe  lectured  in  several  of  the  northern 
cities  on  "The  Poetic  Principles."  While  at  Lowell  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  Richmonds,  Mrs.  Richmond, 
the  "Annie."  of  these  later  years.  In  January  1849,  Poe 
was  at  Fordham,  writing  from  ten  to  four  every  day.13 
"Marginalia,"  begun  in  The  Democratic  Review,  of  Novem 
ber,  1844,  and  continued  in  Graham' 's  and  Godey's,  began 
afresh  in  The  Messenger  for  April,  running  through  the 
summer. 

In  June  Poe  left  New  York  for  Richmond,  going  with 
Mrs.  Clemm  to  spend  the  night  before  the  journey  under 
the  roof  of  their  devoted  friend,  Mrs.  S.  D.  Lewis. 
Prescience  that  this  was  to  be  their  last  farewell  was  borne 
in  upon  the  three  who  in  deepest  sadness  said  goodby. 
Poe  himself  was  greatly  dejected — this  perhaps  the  fore 
runner  of  the  desperate  condition  in  which  he  reached 
Philadelphia,  where  he  found  his  friend,  John  Sartain, 
the  publisher.  This  gentleman  kept  Poe  with  him,  guard 
ing  him  with  the  kindest  care,  soothing  and  quieting  his 
distress,  until  he  recovered  sufficiently  to  continue  the 
journey  to  Richmond.  The  melancholy  story  as  told 
by  Mr.  Sartain  shows  the  encroachment  of  the  brain  lesion 
as  diagnosed  by  Mrs.  Shew,  the  consequences  most 

13  Letter  from  Mrs.  Clemm  to  "Annie."     Harrison's  "Virginia  Edition." 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  97 

pitiable  in  grasping  the  momentary  relief  of  drugs  or 
stimulants.  But  from  Mr.  Sartain,  and  all  others  who 
ever  saw  him  under  these  conditions  in  the  closing  years 
of  his  life,  when  practically  a  dying  man,  comes  the  not 
uncertain  assertion  that  through  the  frenzy  Poe  never 
uttered  an  unclean  word  nor  was  possessed  of  an  impure 
fancy;  only  brilliant  imagery  and  glowing  words  depicting 
his  ideal  which  never  forsook  nor  betrayed  him. 

Poe's  Richmond  friends  welcomed  him  with  open  arms. 
Mrs.  Shelton's  letters  to  Mrs.  Clemm  indicate  the  renewal 
of  their  engagement.  At  last  he  seemed  to  stand  in  the 
sunshine,  even  The  Stylus  was  promised  an  assured  exis 
tence.  Before  leaving  Fordham,  Poe  had  corresponded 
with  E.  H.  N.  Patterson,  of  Oquawka,  111.,  for  its  publica 
tion  and  in  August  arrangements  were  consummated  for  it 
to  appear  simultaneously  in  St.  Louis  and  New  York  on 
the  first  of  the  following  July.  In  September  Poe  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Clemm  in  happy  mood,  he  "had  lectured  in 
Norfolk,  and  cleared  enough  to  settle  my  bill  here  at  the 
Madison  House  and  with  two  dollars  over.  Next  Mon 
day  I  lecture  again  here  and  expect  to  have  a  large  audi 
ence,  on  Tuesday  I  start  for  Philadelphia  to  edit  Mrs. 
Loud's  poems  and  possibly  on  Thursday  I  start  for  New 
York.  If  I  do  I  will  go  straight  over  to  Mrs.  Lewis'  and 
send  for  you."  The  letter  concluded  with  warm  words 
of  affection.  Poe's  purpose  was  to  bring  Mrs.  Clemm 
back  with  him  to  Richmond  and  both  were  happy  in 
the  looked-for  return.  Upon  the  last  days  in  Richmond 
Dr.  Harrison  throws  new  light  in  the  hitherto  unpublished 
statements  of  Bishop  Fitzgerald  and  William  Glenn  of 
that  city.  These  are  given  fully  in  the  first  volume  of  the 


98  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

incomparable  Virginia  Edition  of  "Edgar  Allan  Poe," 
for  which  work  all  Poe  students  owe  Dr.  Harrison  pro 
found  gratitude.  Quoting  Bishop  Fitzgerald:  "With  a 
view  to  giving  him  pecuniary  assistance  in  a  delicate  way, 
and  an  expression  of  the  good  will  of  the  Richmond  public 
toward  him,  Poe  was  invited  to  deliver  a  lecture  on  some 
topic  to  be  chosen  by  himself.  The  tickets  were  placed  at 
five  dollars  each,  and  at  that  price  three  hundred  persons 
were  packed  into  the  Assembly  Rooms  of  the  Old  Ex 
change  Hotel.  The  lecture  prepared  for  the  occasion  was 
on  'The  Poetic  Principle,'  and  it  was  read  by  him  as  it 
is  now  presented  in  his  works.  He  was  a  charming  reader, 
his  manner  the  opposite  of  the  elocutionary  or  sentimen 
tal — quiet,  without  gesture,  with  distinctness  of  utterance, 
nice  shadings  of  accent,  easy  gracefulness,  and  that  inde 
finable  element  that  draws  the  hearer  toward  the  speaker 
with  increasing  good  will  and  pleasure.  I  am  glad  that 
I  heard  Poe  read  that  lecture;  its  sentences  on  the  printed 
page  have  for  me  an  added  charm  from  the  recollection. 
The  net  proceeds  of  the  lecture  amounted  to  fifteen  hun 
dred  dollars." 

According  to  a  letter14  to  Mrs.  Clemm  from  Mrs. 
Shelton,  Poe  spent  the  last  evening  in  Richmond  with  the 
latter.  She  writes,  "he  came  to  take  leave  of  me.  He 
was  very  sad  and  complained  of  being  sick.  I  felt  his 
pulse  and  found  he  had  considerable  fever,  and  did  not 
think  it  probable  he  would  be  able  to  start  the  next  morn 
ing  (Thursday)  as  he  anticipated.  I  felt  so  wretched 
about  him  all  that  night  that  I  went  up  early  the  next 

"  Woodberry:  "Life  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe." 


A  CENTENARY  TRIBUTE.  99 

morning  to  enquire  after  him,  when  much  to  my  regret 
he  had  left  in  the  boat  for  Baltimore." 

Further  accounts  agree  that  on  his  walk  back  from  Mrs. 
Shelton's  he  stopped  at  Dr.  John  Carter's  office;  and  later 
"went  to  take  a  little  supper  across  the  street  at  Sadler's 
restaurant.  There  he  met  some  acquaintances  .... 
who  accompanied  him  to  the  boat,  where,  as  is  said, 
they  left  him  sober  and  cheerful."  His  last  words  to  his 
friends  were  "He  would  soon  be  in  Richmond  again." 

On  October  the  3d,  1849,  Joseph  W.  Walker,  a  composi 
tor  on  The  Sun,  Baltimore,  wrote  Dr.  J.  E.  Snodgrass  a 
note  which  Dr.  Harrison  copied  from  the  original  one  in 
the  possession  of  Mrs.  Snodgrass: 

BALTIMORE  CITY,  OCTOBER  3, 1849. 

Dear  Sir:  There  is  a  gentleman,  rather  the  worse  for  wear,  at  Ryan's 
4th  Ward  polls,  who  goes  under  the  cognomen  of  Edgar  A.  Poe,  and  who 
appears  in  great  distress,  and  he  says  he  is  acquainted  with  you,  and  I  assure 
you  he  is  in  need  of  immediate  assistance. 

Yours  in  haste, 

JOSEPH  W.  WALKER. 
To  Dr.  J.  E.  Snodgrass. 

Dr.  Snodgrass  on  receipt  of  the  note  hastened  to  attend 
Poe  and  finding  him  in  a  dangerous  state  had  him  removed 
to  the  Washington  College  University  Hospital.  Poe 
was  at  first  unconscious,  then  delirious,  from  which  con 
dition  he  sank  into  the  quiet  of  exhaustion.  In  the  gray 
dawn  of  Sunday  morning,  moving  his  head  gently  to  and 
fro  upon  his  pillow,  he  quietly  said:  "Lord  help  my  poor 
soul,"  and  died. 

The  Sun  of  October  8,  1849,  announced:  "We  regret  to 
learn  that  Edgar  A.  Poe,  Esq.,  the  distinguished  American 
poet,  scholar,  and  critic,  died  in  this  city  yesterday  morn- 


100  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

ing,  after  an  illness  of  four  or  five  days.  This  announce 
ment,  coming  so  sudden  and  unexpected,  will  cause 
poignant  regret  among  all  who  admire  genius  and  have 
sympathies  for  the  frailties  too  often  attending  it." 

Many  accounts  from  diverse  standpoints  have  been 
written  of  the  tragic  end  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  The  evi 
dence  given  by  Bishop  Fitzgerald  strongly  supports  the 
belief  that  Poe  was  a  victim  of  robbery  and  of  "cooping" 
for  political  purposes — this  being  a  common  practice  in 
Baltimore  at  that  day — a  view  sustained  not  only  by  the 
impossibility  of  locating  his  whereabouts  from  Friday, 
September  28,  to  October  3,  but  the  handsome  clothing 
which  he  wore  when  leaving  Richmond  had  been  changed 
for  poor  and  dirty  garments.  Testimony  confirming  this 
is  given  in  the  letter  from  William  J.  Glenn  of  Richmond. 
Mr.  Glenn  was  Poe's  fellow  member  in  the  "Sons  of 
Temperance"  and  administered  the  obligations  of  total 
abstinence  when  admitting  him  early  in  July  of  1849.  He 
states:  "During  his  stay  in  the  city  of  the  next  three 
months  or  more  there  was  not  the  slightest  intimation  that 
he  had  failed  to  live  up  to  his  obligation.  In  October  he 
started  to  Baltimore  ....  a  few  days  later  we 
heard  of  his  death  at  a  hospital  in  that  city,  and  the  state 
ment  was  made  and  too  busily  circulated  that  his  death 
was  the  result  of  a  spree  commenced  as  soon  as  he  reached 
Baltimore.  We  of  the  temperance  order  to  which  he 
belonged  exerted  ourselves  to  get  at  the  facts,  and  con 
census  of  opinion  was  that  he  had  not  been  drinking,  but 
had  been  drugged.  A  gentleman  of  the  name  of  Benson, 
went  to  Baltimore,  and  as  he  knew  Poe 
and  felt  much  interest  in  the  manner  of  his  death,  went 


A   CENTENARY   TRIBUTE.  IOI 

to  the  hospital  at  which  he  died,  and  had  a  talk  with  the 
doctor  (J.  J.  Moran)  who  told  him  that  Poe  had  not  been 
drinking  when  brought  to  the  hospital  but  was  under  the 
influence  of  a  drug;  he  added  that  he  suggested  the  use  of 
stimulants,  but  that  Mr.  Poe  positively  declined  taking 
any.  Mr.  Poe  lived  very  quietly  while  here." 

After  his  tired  soul  was  at  rest,  Poe's  magic  voice  still 
spoke  in  the  sweetest  of  love  ballads.  Annabel  Lee,  which 
appeared  in  the  New  York  Tribune  October  9,  1849 — the 
very  day  when  his  funeral  cortege  of  six  gentlemen 
followed  him  through  the  chill  rain  to  his  grave  in  the 
family  lot  at  Westminster  Burying  Ground.  In  the 
same  issue  of  the  paper  was  the  vindictive  article  by 
Rufus  Griswold,  signed  "Ludwig."  A  month  after  Poe's 
death,  the  third  and  final  version  of  "The  Bells"  was 
published  in  the  November  number  of  The  Union  Maga 
zine,  its  development  traced  by  the  editor,  John  Sartain. 
A  year  later,  October,  1850,  "The  Poetic  Principle" 
appeared  in  the  same  magazine.  The  loveliest  dream  of 
a  poet's  home,  "Lander's  Cottage,"  was  not  given  to  the 
world  until  much  later. 

The  mystery  surrounding  Poe's  last  days  is  long  in 
finding  solution.  With  his  faults  acknowledged  by  his 
friends,  the  extenuating  conditions  of  his  physical  organi 
zation,  heredity  and  disease  reluctantly  admitted  by  his 
enemies,  prejudice  sprung  from  malice  and  wilful  turning 
from  truth  must  disappear.  All  who  possess  the  divine 
element  of  pity  will  unite  in  feeling  that  his  sufferings  were 
his  expiation,  an  expiation  not  only  in  life  but  after  death 
in  the  untruthful  representations  of  his  life  and  character. 

Great  as  this  has  been,  it  has  not  robbed  the  world  of 


102  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 

the  legacy  he  bequeathed  to  literature,  nor  has  it  stilled  the 
voices  that,  as  one,  acclaim  his  many  fine  qualities; 
lauding  his  devotion  to  his  nearest  ties  and  to  his  friends, 
his  undaunted  efforts  to  maintain  his  wife  and  mother  when 
ill  in  body  and  enduring  the  most  wearing  of  all  pain — 
hope  deferred,  his  honest  and  proper  pride,  disdaining 
to  reproach  when  reproach  was  justifiable,  his  well-nigh 
superhuman  industry  and  patience,  his  courage  that 
refrained  from  lamentation  and,  through  all  and  over  all, 
the  purity  of  his  life.  As  these  voices  speak  truly, 
their  words  live,  for,  having  caught  the  fine  ear  of  justice 
with  which  the  people  of  America  ever  listen,  they  are 
imperishable. 


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